Research
Mixed
Women may exhibit attenuated metabolic adaptations to Sprint Interval Training (SIT) compared to men, specifically regarding improvements in insulin sensitivity, potentially due to lower muscle glycogen breakdown and lactate accumulation during sprints.
While women benefit from SIT for aerobic fitness similarly to men, they might not see the same improvements in insulin sensitivity from the same protocol. Women might need to adjust their training or monitor metabolic health markers more closely if insulin sensitivity is a primary goal.
ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
When previously sedentary but otherwise healthy men and women trained 3x/week for 6 weeks, gains in aerobic capacity were similar, but insulin sensitivity measured using OGTTs was improved in men only.
Why this rating
Based on a limited number of studies with mixed results; some studies show no sex differences.
Source
Physiological and Health-Related Adaptations to Low-Volume Interval Training: Influences of Nutrition and Sex
Martin J. Gibala et al. · Sports Medicine · 2014
DOI 10.1007/s40279-014-0259-6
narrative_reviewCited 215×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Low-volume sprint interval training (SIT) and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) elicit similar physiological and health-related adaptations (e.g., VO2max, mitochondrial content) to high-volume moderate-intensity continuous training (MICT) despite significantly lower time commitment and total work volume.Good
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