Evaluation of The Study on Resistance Training for Improvements in Glycemic Control and Cardiovascular Health

Regular physical activity as a part of the diabetes management regime can effectively improve metabolic profiles, reduce hypertension, and decrease mortality due to vascular complications. As known the aerobic training (AT) is followed by increases in volume of exercise associated with decreases in morbidity. The article summarizes the study that was done to determine a resistance training protocol that optimally improves glycemic control (primary objective), as well as cardiovascular risk factors and anthropometrics in T2DM (secondary objectives) while controlling for total exercise volume. The study compared training volumes and intensities from previously successful protocols in an attempt to better define optimal RT parameters.

It was hypothesized that high intensity RT would provide a superior training stimulus to improve glycemic control and cardiovascular risk factors than a lower volume and lower intensity RT protocol, when the total amount of work performed is kept constant. All in all, the aim for the study was to compare different volumes and intensities of resistance training (RT) combined with aerobic training (AT) for improvements in glycemic control and cardiovascular health for persons with type 2 diabetes (T2DM).

There were sixty two participants (48% female) for the study and they were divided into three groups: usual care (RT1), high intensity RT (RT2) or endurance RT (RT3), with the same volume of work in RT2 and RT3. They were randomized into this 6-month trial and were not participating in other exercise training at the time of recruitment. The article by itself was designed well, however, some little errors were occurred while reading. Most of the time people do not go through the whole article but choose to read the abstract or the executive summary (whichever is provided) in order to understand the aims of it and after that will come the decision of whether to read the article in more detailed way or not. There is a chance that those people will not be statisticians or will not have a statistical background that is why is important to have the abstract in more readable way and make it with less statistical or mathematical parameters. In our case the abstract was written well, however, the statistical numbers and huge number of brackets make it a little messy. That happens through the whole article as most of the sentences were long and included brackets making you lose yourself in the paragraph, which made it a little massy.

One of the advantages of this article was that it was designed so each part had its own space of discussion, and let you find whichever you want very easily and quickly. The other advantage was the graphs and tables as most of the time they are really “eye friendly”, moreover, they usually can make more clear view of what has been discussed. The methods and material part was really strong as it clearly described the steps that were undertaken during the study. The subtests were organised and divided so that each part showed the importance of each step in the study, starting with the participants to the exercises for the trial. The other well organised part is the references with the correct addresses and in-text notations. This is not the least important part as it showed how much research have you done and how accurate is your study.

Taking all this into account this article was well organised and essentially it reaches to the goal that was set and the conclusion made all that clear. With so much variability in RT protocols and lack of controlling for total volume of exercise performed overall volume of RT seemed to be the most predictive of glycemic control. The study is the first to control for RT and exercise volume, and similarly found that there was no significant difference in long term glycemic control with high or low intensity RT.