Impact of Different Exercise Modalities on the Human Gut Microbiome

This data supports two exercise interventions to examine human gut microbiome response: one focused on cardiorespiratory exercise, and the other focused on resistance training exercise. Our study adds to this field by presenting two primary findings. First, we show that different exercise modalities differentially impact the gut microbiota. Cardiorespiratory exercise appears to shift the microbiota quickly but then returns to baseline before the end of the exercise intervention, suggesting a "disturbance" to the gut microbiome which is not sustained. Resistance training exercise, on the other hand, does not result in detectable changes to the microbiota. We additionally observe that the baseline (pre-intervention) microbiome appears to predict some aspects of exercise performance change, suggesting that Firmicutes-dominated microbiome states may be a better starting point for enabling individuals to reach their exercise performance goals.