Research

Hormonal

Both endurance (cycling) and resistance (leg extension) exercise initiate similar early-time course phosphorylation of the Akt-mTOR-S6K translational signaling pathway during the first 60 minutes of recovery, indicating that both modalities stimulate protein synthesis machinery.

If your goal is to stimulate the muscle's internal machinery for growth (protein synthesis), both heavy lifting and steady-state cardio are effective triggers in the hour following exercise. You do not need to choose one exclusively to activate these specific growth signals; both work similarly in the short term.

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We show a similar time course for Akt-mTOR-S6K phosphorylation during the initial 60-min recovery period after divergent contractile stimuli.
Donny M. Camera et al. · Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise · 2010

Why this rating

Randomized controlled trial with serial biopsies and rigorous statistical analysis (P<0.05), though small sample size (n=16).

Source

Early Time Course of Akt Phosphorylation after Endurance and Resistance Exercise

Donny M. Camera et al. · Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise · 2010

DOI 10.1249/mss.0b013e3181d964e4

mechanism_only · n=16Cited 152×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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