Oftentimes I find medical research not interesting, most of the people that do strength training know the anxiolytic effect, there is no need for an nth paper to say it, there is a need for research that explain why it is true.

Meta-analysis help in showing trends, it's kinda valuable per se, but there are meta-analysis that show important things that were previously difficult to find because they were scattered in the literature, and the litterature was not with the same sample of people. Here the insights are pretty small, there was not really a doubt about the effect of strength training. A better analysis would be 'which people do not benefit for anxiolytic effects doing sport'. That's unknown, do these people even exist?

It's worth noting that this is a paper from 2014. The premise seems well-known now, but I wonder if it was as strong then?

I agree root cause analysis would be more interesting, but it wouldn't be justified until the base phenomena was validated.

Sure, people who do exercise think it helps stress and anxiety, but lots of people also find homeopathic remedies to be helpful. Papers like this show the former stand up under experimentation and the later don't.

I think that in 2014 it was already well known, there are several meta-analysis that precede this work. yes research is important, even just to state common knowledge, I just find the paper lacking depth and sources, making it not that interesting.

There is no follow-up of this research by the authors, and their research is not really focused on something in particular, I've the impression that it's just another paper on the subject.

there was a lot of popular science on sports training in the 1980s.. perhaps related to new, excellent measurement of blood content at different stages of exercise? a fallout of that science was the steriods era in US pro sports

Science confirming "common knowledge" is still important not only to cement the common knowledge with supporting data but also to open avenues to find mechanisms, which also leads to your question:

> A better analysis would be 'which people do not benefit for anxiolytic effects doing sport'. That's unknown, do these people even exist?

If there was no scientific validation of the benefits this question wouldn't be able to be researched.

I totally agree on that, I was not saying that it is not important, I just found the paper lacking depth

> most of the people that do strength training know the anxiolytic effect

Many people also thought drinking bleach prevents Covid. Whatever people NK and feel, it is important to have it confirm scientifically.

Exercise is so good for so many things except fat loss, which everyone thinks it's good for.

Did you mean weight loss instead of fat loss perhaps?

By "fat," most people mean subcutaneous adipose tissue, and isn't that the weight we seek most to lose? To what other fat might they refer? Intracranial lipomas?

Resistance training is fine for fat loss, at least up to some level (single digit numbers usually need more). It's just that muscles are heavier but muscles consume more energy (colloquially said).

That's why I thought that perhaps it was weight loss as in scale measurement that might be the concern.

but claiming exercise is good for fat loss is big business, so everybody believes it.

Weight training is the single best thing I can do for both my mental and physical health. Even more important than eating healthy.

I've never had a healthcare worker recommend it to me. Why not?

We should teach it in public schools.