Hey! Great question. The conclusion regarding aerobic exercise came from lots of the literature I was reading saying something like “the effect went away when compared to aerobic exercise.” I should probably not have said “high intensity,” as I don’t really remember looking specifically at any intensities, but umm—below I’ll list the evidence from my answer that kind of points this out. [all of this is just pulled from my big answer comment so if you want more context, look there for the link, etc]
Having looked at it again to list the evidence, I think the evidence I saw was basically.
A. Comparison: resistance to aerobic = no difference
B. Comparison: aerobic to resistance+aerobic = no difference
So I concluded that
The effect of resistance and aerobic on sleep and cognition don’t seem to be independent (or rather, at the very least they are not additive—comparison B).
I guess my thought was that if resistance = aerobic = resistance + aerobic, then either you’re getting the benefits of resistance training from aerobic exercise or you’re getting the benefits of aerobic exercise from resistance training. The latter just seemed more plausible to me. But I highlighted the specific sentences that led me to this below, so please just see for yourself!
Sleep:
“These benefits of isolated resistance exercise are attenuated when resistance exercise is combined with aerobic exercise and compared to aerobic exercise alone”
+
“There is limited evidence that combined exercise is better than aerobic exercise alone, and further study is warranted. Data from this review and recent reviews of aerobic exercise [44, 57] suggest that both modalities are effective for improving sleep quality”
Cognitive
first study: “Numerous experimental studies have demonstrated that exercise interventions improve cognitive abilities (Kelly et al., 2014b), but benefits have been more consistent for aerobic training, or combined cardiovascular fitness and resistance training”
and the 2nd study: ““Our review detected no difference between RE and AE in acute effects on brain function.”
Hey! Great question. The conclusion regarding aerobic exercise came from lots of the literature I was reading saying something like “the effect went away when compared to aerobic exercise.” I should probably not have said “high intensity,” as I don’t really remember looking specifically at any intensities, but umm—below I’ll list the evidence from my answer that kind of points this out. [all of this is just pulled from my big answer comment so if you want more context, look there for the link, etc]
Having looked at it again to list the evidence, I think the evidence I saw was basically.
A. Comparison: resistance to aerobic = no difference
B. Comparison: aerobic to resistance+aerobic = no difference
So I concluded that
The effect of resistance and aerobic on sleep and cognition don’t seem to be independent (or rather, at the very least they are not additive—comparison B).
I guess my thought was that if resistance = aerobic = resistance + aerobic, then either you’re getting the benefits of resistance training from aerobic exercise or you’re getting the benefits of aerobic exercise from resistance training. The latter just seemed more plausible to me. But I highlighted the specific sentences that led me to this below, so please just see for yourself!
Sleep:
“These benefits of isolated resistance exercise are attenuated when resistance exercise is combined with aerobic exercise and compared to aerobic exercise alone”
+
“There is limited evidence that combined exercise is better than aerobic exercise alone, and further study is warranted. Data from this review and recent reviews of aerobic exercise [44, 57] suggest that both modalities are effective for improving sleep quality”
Cognitive
first study: “Numerous experimental studies have demonstrated that exercise interventions improve cognitive abilities (Kelly et al., 2014b), but benefits have been more consistent for aerobic training, or combined cardiovascular fitness and resistance training”
and the 2nd study: ““Our review detected no difference between RE and AE in acute effects on brain function.”