Not surprising, given that muscle mass is your biggest metabolic sink, hoovering up blood sugar. More muscle is more better.

I’m skeptical of how useful a mouse model would be in this specific case, since my interpretation of the article is they’re measuring marginal differences that could easily be influenced by factors unique to human physiology, diet, etc. It sounds like they created novel exercises to approximate human weightlifting in mice, which would have to be scrutinized in peer review.

It’s almost certain that both types of exercise are good for you, but the degree to which one might be better than the other is less important for most people than doing anything at a minimum and ideally a mix of both, as the article mentions.

I wonder if the mice that had to lift the heavy door were eating less as a consequence and skewing the results …

Heart attack is the big problem for weight lifting.