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Trainome

Physical activity is crucial for maintaining good health and normal bodily function for all individuals, but the extent of the effects one experiences from exercise varies greatly among people.

Affiliation:
Faculty of Social and Health Sciences
Academic discipline:
Health, sports and welfare

Different types of physical activity and exercise yield various physiological effects, and individuals respond differently to different types of training. Some may experience significant effects from one type of training, while others may have minimal impact. Untrained individuals respond differently than trained individuals, and various diseases affect both training responses and the importance of different training effects. Additionally, there is significant individual variation in training responses within these groups of people.

Despite this, current exercise recommendations for the population are relatively general. There could be substantial health and socioeconomic benefits in developing exercise recommendations that are more tailored to each individual. Various athletes would also greatly benefit from this knowledge development to optimize the effects of their training

What we research

The research group Trainome is working to determine the causes of the significant variation in training responses and to understand how the effects of exercise can be maximized. Their goal is to ensure that each individual can derive the greatest possible benefit from physical activity and training.

Projects

More about the research group

The research group Trainome is specifically focused on mapping training responses to various types of exercise in different individuals. They investigate how the response changes by altering the type of training, training volume, or resistance, and how the response is influenced by the individual's physiological status (such as genetic predispositions or nutritional status). The responses being examined include muscular effects (muscle strength, volume, quality, fiber type composition, protein synthesis, underlying molecular mechanisms for muscle growth, functionality, speed, etc.), metabolic effects (body composition, blood sugar, blood lipid levels, systemic inflammation, etc.), effects on the heart and circulatory system (blood volume, arterial stiffness, blood pressure, stroke volume, etc.), effects on the immune system, effects on gut flora, effects on quality of life, and effects on performance (sport-specific measures of performance and underlying performance-determining factors such as strength, muscle characteristics, maximum oxygen uptake, utilization of maximum oxygen uptake, work economy, lactate profile, speed, agility, etc.).

Determining the individual-level effects of training is a highly complex question that requires data from many different individuals. Therefore, the TrainOme research group is built around the biobank "Trainome – Human Cells' Adaptation to Exercise and Environment" (2013/2041/REK South-East). This biobank stores biological material and data from all studies conducted by the group, allowing the study of individual responses in a meta-perspective with a much larger number of diverse individuals and interventions than can be included in a single study.

Selected projects:

Contact the research group

Picture of Håvard Hamarsland
Håvard Hamarsland
Førsteamanuensis
Email
havard.hamarsland@inn.no
Phone
+47 61 28 82 57

Members