Research
Mixed
Genetic factors account for 30-60% of the variance in cardiorespiratory fitness response to exercise training in humans.
Your genetic makeup determines a significant portion of how much your fitness will improve with exercise. This is not a failure of willpower. If one type of exercise doesn't work, try others, as genetic response to specific modalities may vary.
StrongSupportsHIGH confidence
This is evidence of a familial/genetic component, accounting for 30%–60% of the variance adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity and other concomitants...
Why this rating
Supported by twin studies, family studies, and rodent selection experiments.
Source
Precision exercise medicine: understanding exercise response variability
Robert Ross et al. · British Journal of Sports Medicine · 2019
DOI 10.1136/bjsports-2018-100328
narrative_reviewCited 263×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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- Standardized exercise training produces highly variable cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) responses in humans, with a significant portion of individuals showing no improvement (non-responders) despite adherence to prescribed protocols.Strong
- Defining 'non-responders' is methodologically challenging and depends heavily on the threshold used (e.g., measurement error vs. clinical significance), leading to inconsistent classification across studies.Good
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