12/05/2026
One of the interesting things about fitness and health research is the following:
Experts will create a hypothesis. That is, they’ll have a theory that if we do X, we will get Y. They create a series of trials to test their hypothesis. Sometimes they’re correct, other times not. But what happens when they’re right, is sometimes the research inadvertently becomes skewed. More and more similar research develops over decades and before you know it, forty years has gone by with a large body of evidence to support one thing, but significantly less research in other areas.
This happened with the benefits of cardiovascular exercise, particularly in the second half of the 20th century, and whilst major progress was made, it was only until the turn of the 21st century that experts started to look extensively at the health benefits surrounding resistance training and the importance of retaining muscle.
Was great to talk a bit of shop with Dr Dave Clark in the most recent episode. Check it out.