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Effects of a 12-week endurance training program on the physiological response to psychosocial stress in men: a randomized controlled trial

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Abstract

The present study experimentally tested the cross-stressor adaptation hypothesis by examining whether endurance exercise training leads to reductions in the physiological stress response to a psychosocial stressor. We randomly assigned 149 healthy men to a 12-week exercise training, relaxation training, or a wait list control group. Before and after intervention we assessed the groups’ physical fitness (lactate testing) and compared their physiological stress responses to the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups in terms of salivary free cortisol, heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV); the final sample consisted of 96 subjects. As hypothesized, the exercise training significantly improved fitness and reduced stress reactivity in all three parameters; however, it only improved stress recovery in terms of HR. The relaxation program reduced only cortisol, but not HR or HRV reactivity; no changes emerged for the control group. The findings suggest that the cross-stressor adaptation hypothesis is valid for cardiovascular as well as endocrine stress reactivity.

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Notes

  1. It must be noted that these exclusions might cause our analyses to become less conservative (Gupta, 2011).

  2. Different committees judged the subjects at T1 and T2 while judging the same number of subjects at T1 and T2.

  3. We preferred the AUC G to the AUC with respect to increase (AUC I ), as we were interested in the total amount of the response (Federenko et al., 2004). Furthermore, the AUC I is based on the reference to the first value allowing for negative results in the case of a decrease (Pruessner et al., 2003).

  4. A baseline reduction already implies absolute changes in stress reactivity. If the baseline value is taken into account, relative changes are examined. As regular exercise is not known to generally reduce the cortisol level (Duclos & Tabarin, 2011), there was no need to assess the relative change in stress reactivity for cortisol.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the German Research Foundation (Research Grant FU458/2-1).

Conflict of interest

Authors Sandra Klaperski, Bernadette von Dawans, Markus Heinrichs, and Reinhard Fuchs declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Informed Consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Sports Science, University of Freiburg, Schwarzwaldstr. 175, 79117, Freiburg, Germany

    Sandra Klaperski & Reinhard Fuchs

  2. Laboratory for Biological and Personality Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Freiburg, Stefan-Meier-Str. 8, 79104, Freiburg, Germany

    Bernadette von Dawans & Markus Heinrichs

  3. Freiburg Brain Imaging Center, University Medical Center, University of Freiburg, 79106, Freiburg, Germany

    Markus Heinrichs

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  1. Sandra Klaperski
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  2. Bernadette von Dawans
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  4. Reinhard Fuchs
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Correspondence to Sandra Klaperski.

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Klaperski, S., von Dawans, B., Heinrichs, M. et al. Effects of a 12-week endurance training program on the physiological response to psychosocial stress in men: a randomized controlled trial. J Behav Med 37, 1118–1133 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-014-9562-9

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