The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of endurance-oriented exercise on myosin heavy chain (MHC) isoform regulation in human skeletal muscle. Exercise consisted of 1 h of cycle ergometer work per day at 75% maximal oxygen consumption for seven consecutive days. Muscle was obtained before the first bout of exercise, 3 h after the first bout of exercise, and before and 3 h after the final exercise bout on day 7 (n = 9 subjects). No changes in MHC mRNA (I, IIa, IIx) were evident after the first exercise period. There was, however, a significant (P < 0.05) decline (30%) in MHC IIx mRNA 3 h after the final training bout. An interesting finding was that a higher pretraining level of MHC IIx mRNA was associated with a greater decline in the transcript before (r = 0.68, P < 0.05) and 3 h after (r = 0.82, P < 0.05) the final exercise bout. These findings suggest that MHC IIx mRNA is downregulated during the early phase of endurance-oriented exercise training in human skeletal muscle but only after repeated contractile activity. Pretraining MHC IIx mRNA content may influence the magnitude of this response.

contractile activity; muscle fiber type

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