## 2 Materials and Methods  
**Participant Recruitment:** A single-blinded controlled study was conducted at Taipei Medical University Hospital, and the protocol was approved by the TMU Joint Institutional Review Board (IRB no. : N202004023). The trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (accessed on 1 June 2021) (NCT04532905). Initially, 13 young male participants were recruited and allocated into two groups between July 2020 and February 2021 through convenience sampling. Among these participants, three were excluded. Thus, five participants were included in the untrained group (with no weight training experience) and trained group (with 2 months of weight training experience). Each participant signed a written consent form before the start of the study. The inclusion criteria were: (1) healthy male individuals of 20-40 years of age; (2) no metabolic, systematic, or musculoskeletal disease or injury; (3) no recent surgical procedure that could limit exercise training; (4) taking no medications, especially sedatives, antidepressants, antihypertensive, etc. ; and (5) physically fit according to the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q) [19]. The exclusion criteria were a diagnosis of any metabolic, systematic, or musculoskeletal disease; an injury; or a recent surgery (Figure 1). Functional outcome measurements and data analyses were performed by trained research staff who were not involved in the intervention. Participants were blinded to their groups in this study. **Experimental procedure:** Each participant visited the training room, where testing and data collection were completed, for five separate sessions. All participants were instructed to eat a meal 2-4 h before testing, to avoid alcohol and caffeine ingestion for 24 h before testing, and to refrain from strenuous exercise for 24-48 h before testing [20]. **Session 1:** During the first visit, baseline body weight (kg), height (cm), body mass index (BMI), and body fat percentage were measured using a Karada Scan-371 body scale (Omron, Kyoto, Japan). Each participant was evaluated using the PAR-Q for physical fitness, and the testing and training procedures were explained to them by an expert researcher. In this session, participants performed a familiarization exercise before the training sessions. The performed exercises were the dumbbell bent-over row, deadlift, and lunge with the participant's preferred weight, with three sets of 10 repetitions performed at a cadence of 2 s up and 2 s down using an audible metronome. An audible cadence was used to control for potential variations in the lifting cadence of the participants. Between  
Figure 1: Study Flow Diagram. each set, there was a 3 min rest period, and there was a 10 min rest between each type of exercise [21]. **Session 2:** During this session, each participant performed a maximum of three to five sets to achieve their maximum 1 RM for the dumbbell bent-over row, deadlift, and lunge exercises. Briefly, the participants performed a warmup consisting of 8 to 10 repetitions using a light weight, 3 to 5 repetitions using a moderate weight, and 1 to 3 repetitions using a heavy weight. After the warmup sets, the 1 RM strength of the participants was tested by increasing the resistance on subsequent attempts until the participant was unable to complete an attempt using proper technique through the full range of motion [22]. Between each set, the participant was given a 2-4 min rest interval. Participants performed one repetition with each load to minimize muscle fatigue. Between the 1 RM bent-over row, deadlift, and lunge, there was a 10-15 min rest period, during which participants were allowed to walk, perform light dynamic movements, and consume small amounts of water [21]. A familiarization session was added to practice the proper technique before the start of formal training.