Professor Adrianne Hardman

  • Emeritus Professor of Human Exercise Metabolism
Adrianne Hardman

Adrianne Hardman, who has a PhD from Loughborough, taught physical education and physics in Manchester for 4 years.

She then moved into Higher Education and was a lecturer at Padgate College in Cheshire for 7 years, during which time she was awarded an MSc from Salford University.

She was responsible for the teaching of exercise physiology at the West London Institute of Higher Education (now part of Brunel University) for one year before moving to Loughborough in 1978.

As lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and then professor, she remained at Loughborough, contributing to teaching and, increasingly, to research until April 2001.

As the School's first Emeritus Professor she keeps in touch with its activities in the exercise and health field but finds time to enjoy the sociability and challenge of her new hobby - golf.

Her research focus is on the role of moderate exercise such as brisk walking on health outcomes, particularly in middle-aged an older people.

Topics of interest include changes in fitness, risk factors for cardiovascular disease and, with colleagues from the Department of Human Sciences, measures of body fatness and skeletal integrity.

Research projects were funded by the British Heart Foundation and the National Osteoporosis Society, amongst others. Over the last decade her research has been concerned with the influence of exercise on the postprandial disturbances to lipid metabolism. This addressed both practical questions relevant to dose-response issues and, in collaboration with the Oxford Lipid Metabolism Group, to the mechanisms involved.

Adrianne is a Fellow of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences and a past member of the editorial boards of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the Journal of Physical Activity and Health and the Journal of Cardiovascular Risk.

She was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the National Fitness Survey and a Committee Member of the Royal Society of Medicine Forum on Lipids and Medicine.

She has published widely and given invited lectures in many countries. Her book, co-authored with David Stensel, was described by Professor Jerry Morris as '...meeting the needs of countless students of physical activity and health now to be found in university sports sciences, clinical medicine, epidemiology, and in the social domain, from transport planning to the fitness industry.' A third edition was published in 2021.

Relevant Experience

  • Consultant to British Association of Cardiac Rehabilitation's Open Learning Project.
  • Steering Group for British Heart Foundation and Countryside Commission project "Walking: The Way to Health."
  • Organising Committee of international workshop 'Interaction of physical activity and diet for health', International Life Sciences Institute (Europe), March 1999.

Invited/keynote speaker at the following meetings and symposia:

  • European College of Sport Sciences (1997)
  • British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (1997 & 2000)
  • Utrecht Symposium on Postprandial Lipoprotein Metabolism (1998)
  • Royal Society of Medicine (Exercise, lipid metabolism and cardiovascular risk, 1998 and Marathon Medicine 2000 (2000)
  • XXVI World Congress of Federation Internationale de Medicine Sportive (1998)
  • British Atherosclerosis Society (1999)
  • Symposium of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at annual meeting of American College of Sports Medicine (1999)
  • Nutrition Society (1997 & 2000)
  • Consensus Symposium on "Dose-response issues concerning physical activity and health: an evidence-based symposium." Toronto, Canada.
  • Health Canada and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2000).

Featured publications

  • Hardman AE, Stensel DJ (2003) Physical activity and health: the evidence explained. London, Routledge ISBN 0-415-27070-7.
  • Hardman AE (2006) Acute responses to physical activity and exercise. In Physical activity and health. Bouchard C, Blair SN, Haskell W (eds) Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetics ISBN 0-7360-5092-2.
  • Gill JMR, Malkova D, Hardman AE (2005) Reproducibility of an oral fat tolerance test is influenced by phase of menstrual cycle. Hormone and Metabolic Research 37:336-341
  • Gill JMR, Hardman AE (2003) Exercise and postprandial lipid metabolism: an update on potential mechanisms and interactions with high-carbohydrate diets. Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry 14:122-132.
  • Koutsari C, Karpe F, Humphreys, SM, Frayn KN, Hardman AE (2003) Plasma leptin is influenced by diet composition and exercise. International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders 27 (8) 901-906.
  • Murphy MH, Nevill AM, Neville C, Biddle SJH and Hardman AE (2002) Accumulating brisk walking for fitness, cardiovascular risk, and psychological health. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 34(9):1468-74.
  • Gill JMR, Herd SL, Hardman AE (2002) Moderate exercise and postprandial metabolism: issues of dose-response. Journal of Sports Sciences 20:961-967.