Lipid metabolism in young men after acute resistance exercise at two different intensities

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of different resistance training loads on blood lipids. Six healthy, untrained male volunteers performed three protocols: control (no exercise), high intensity (HI) and low intensity (LI) exercise seven days apart. Each protocol comprised eight exercises. The HI protocol used a 10-repetition maximum (RM) load and 10 repetitions. In the LI protocol, the load was halved and repetitions doubled. The volume of work performed in the two exercise protocols was identical. Blood samples were collected before, immediately after, and 15 min after each protocol and analysed for total, high density (HDL-C), low density cholesterol and triglyceride. The only significant effect of exercise was to acutely increase HDL-C in the immediate post exercise sample compared with the control. There was no significant effect on any lipid fraction resulting from the LI protocol compared with the control. The results of this study suggest that intensity alone has an effect in determining the HDL-C response to acute resistance exercise.