Metabolism and exercise during youth: the year that was 2017

Two publications were selected because they are excellent representations of studies examining different ends of the exercise-sedentary behavior continuum in young people. The first study is an acute response study with 13 mixed-sex, mid to late adolescents presenting complete data from 4 different randomized experimental crossover conditions for analyses. Continuous glucose monitoring showed that interrupting prolonged continuous sitting with body-weight resistance exercises reduced the postprandial glucose concentration compared with a time-matched uninterrupted period of sitting. Furthermore, the effects of the breaks in sitting time were independent of the energy content of the standardized meals, but variations in the area under the glucose time curves expression were important. The second study adopted a chronic 12-week exercise training intervention design with a large sample of obese children and adolescents who were allocated randomly to high-intensity interval training (HIIT), moderate-intensity continuous training, or nutritional advice groups. HIIT was the most efficacious for improving cardiorespiratory fitness compared with the other interventions; however, cardiometabolic biomarkers and visceral/subcutaneous adipose tissue did not change meaningfully in any group over the 12 weeks. Attrition rates from both HIIT and moderate-intensity continuous training groups reduce the validity of the exercise training comparison, yet this still provides a solid platform for future research comparisons using HIIT in young people.