Cardiometabolic Adaptations to Concurrent Training: Effect of Effort Configuration on Postmenopausal Women

Menopause has a deleterious effect on women's health. The withdrawal of estrogens is associated with changes in body fat distribution, reduced glucose tolerance, abnormal lipid profiles, increased blood pressure, heightened sympathetic tone, endothelial dysfunction, and vascular inflammation. Training programs that combine endurance and resistance exercises-commonly referred to as concurrent training (CT) - at an optimal dose are recommended to counteract or even reverse some of the adverse effects of menopause. This project builds upon a previous study conducted as part of a previous research project (PID2021-124277OB-I00), which examined the cardiovascular, metabolic, neuromuscular, and perceptual responses and adaptations of postmenopausal women to resistance training programs with different set configurations. The present proposal (CARE+E) extends this line of research by systematically incorporating the endurance component into CT programs and by manipulating effort configuration in both resistance and endurance exercises, thereby addressing a major limitation of the previous project, in which the cardiorespiratory training component was not experimentally controlled. The inclusion of endurance training within a controlled CT framework enables the analysis of how resistance and endurance stimuli interact over time. In this context, the interference phenomenon, defined as the attenuation of adaptations induced by one exercise modality when it is combined with another within a concurrent training program, has been widely discussed but remains insufficiently understood, particularly with respect to the role of training load distribution. Effort configuration, defined as the duration of exercise sets relative to the maximal effort that can be sustained at a given intensity, may represent a key factor influencing this interaction. Nevertheless, the combined cardiometabolic and neuromuscular effects of different effort configurations in CT programs have not been systematically investigated, and evidence in physically active postmenopausal women is currently lacking. By implementing a 20-week intervention, this project extends beyond the short- and medium-term durations typically used in postmenopausal populations, allowing for the evaluation of chronic adaptations to concurrent training. Periodic assessments throughout the program will provide insight into the longitudinal evolution of interactions between endurance and resistance training and will enable the identification of combinations of effort configurations that maximize health-related benefits. In this way, the project will generate novel evidence to inform the design of optimized concurrent training prescriptions tailored to the specific physiological characteristics of physically active postmenopausal women.