Prof. Nasser Alzerwi

As an exercise scientist, you’ll probably be surprised to hear I think we focus too much on the long-term benefits of exercise. Not because improving your fitness, strength, muscle mass, or reducing your risk of chronic disease isn’t important - but because these benefits alone might not provide enough incentive for people to act on what they already know is good for them. When you think about it, many of the benefits usually associated with exercise can take months, years, or decades to achieve, and some can be hard to appreciate personally (what does a 20% reduction in the risk of X chronic disease actually mean?). And when the short-term costs of exercise (time, effort, fatigue) are so immediate and obvious, it’s easy to see why the distant and often abstract benefits struggle to compete. Which is why I think we should pay more attention to what exercise can do for us today - and this great new review by James Fisher PhD helps us do exactly that. It summarised the many benefits of just a single resistance training session, including: 🙂 Mood and anxiety: Reduced feelings of anxiety, sometimes within minutes of finishing. 🧠 Brain function: Improvements in certain aspects of cognitive performance. 🩸 Blood glucose: Increased glucose uptake by muscles and changes in glucose regulation that can persist into the following day. 🩺 Blood pressure: Temporary reductions in resting blood pressure during recovery. What’s striking is the sheer range of responses triggered by just a single workout - which is of course well before any large changes in strength or muscle mass may be evident. Some of these may be more noticeable (like changes in mood) but others occur behind the scences (such as blood pressure or glucose impacts). But the important thing is they might just provide you with another reason to take action today. And the more reasons you have to value exercise might just keep you coming back for the longer-term benefits anyway. ----- 📸 Insights and image from: Fisher JP. Beyond the pump: a narrative review of the acute molecular, metabolic, and neuropsychological responses to a bout of resistance exercise. PeerJ. 2026 Oct 16;14:e21827. doi: 10.7717/peerj.21827.