You already know how to talk about exercise as a long-term investment: Better fitness, better metabolic health and better quality of life come from showing up consistently. What’s easy to forget—and what many clients don’t realize—is how quickly the body responds to movement. Not weeks from now. Right away.

A study published in the International Journal of Cancer offers a fresh, practical way to explain that “right away” effect, especially when clients ask whether short workouts really matter. Researchers at Newcastle University in the U.K. collected blood from adults before and immediately after a brief, maximal cycling test and then used the participants’ blood serum in lab experiments with colon cancer cells. The headline isn’t that exercise “treats” cancer. The more accurate, more useful takeaway for both you and your clients is that a single bout of exercise changes what’s circulating in the bloodstream and those changes can influence cancer-related processes in cells in a controlled lab setting.

That message matters because it helps you expand the conversation beyond weight loss and calorie burn. It gives you language for what you’re doing when you program movement: You’re not just training muscles. You’re shaping an internal environment that can support health at multiple levels, including how cells respond to stress.

What the Researchers Tested

The study enrolled 30 apparently healthy adults ages 50 to 78 who had overweight or obesity. Each participant completed a maximal incremental cycling test designed to reach exhaustion in about 10 to 12 minutes. Blood samples were taken before exercise and immediately afterward, which is an important detail. It captures the body’s acute response and the surge of exercise-driven signals that appears when the session ends.

Next, the team tested whether the post-exercise bloodstream environment could change how colon cancer cells behaved in the lab. They treated the cells with serum collected before exercise or right after exercise, then tracked how the cells handled DNA damage over the next 24 hours. They also looked at changes in gene activity to see whether post-exercise serum shifted cellular processes related to repair and growth.

This type of study design is powerful for isolating a mechanism. It’s also a reminder that what you do with clients is bigger than any one session, because this is one snapshot in time. Still, snapshots can be instructive, especially when they help you explain why movement matters even when a person can only manage brief workouts.

How Did Exercise Change the Blood?

The cycling test didn’t just elevate heart rate. It changed what showed up in the bloodstream. When the researchers analyzed 249 proteins, they found that 13 rose after exercise, including IL-6, a signaling protein that spikes during exercise, and its soluble receptor. That matters because it reinforces a larger point: A workout creates an immediate “signal” in the body, carried through the blood, that can influence what cells do next.

That shift wasn’t just theoretical. In the lab, researchers found that serum collected after exercise changed how colon cancer cells responded to a standardized DNA-damage challenge. Compared with pre-exercise serum, post-exercise serum was linked with faster recovery, along with gene-activity changes tied to repair, energy use and growth. According to lead author Dr. Samuel T. Orange, a senior lecturer in clinical exercise physiology, “What’s remarkable is that exercise doesn’t just benefit healthy tissues, it sends powerful signals through the bloodstream that can directly influence thousands of genes in cancer cells.”

This is where the study becomes especially useful for your day-to-day coaching and training. Many clients think the benefits of exercise depend on visible outcomes: a lower number on the scale or more defined muscles. While those are valid goals for some people, they’re not the whole story. The study reinforces that important changes can occur even when the session is short and the external results aren’t immediate.

Dr. Orange was succinct in describing his team’s findings: “Even a single workout can make a difference. One bout of exercise, lasting just 10 minutes, sends powerful signals to the body.”

The Bigger Story: Exercise and Anti-Cancer Potential

This study focused on colon cancer cells, but the idea behind it extends beyond one tissue type: Exercise appears to produce systemic signals that can affect cellular behavior. Colon cancer is a logical model because physical activity is already linked in the research literature with colon cancer risk and outcomes, and because the colon is deeply connected to metabolism and inflammation, which are two areas where exercise has well-established benefits.

For coaching, the broader implication is less about colon cancer specifically and more about reinforcing the value of physical activity as a whole-body health strategy. You can frame exercise as an activity that influences multiple systems at once: immune signaling, inflammation, vascular function, metabolic regulation and cellular stress responses. Those are the same systems that repeatedly show up when researchers look for pathways that connect lifestyle with chronic disease risk.

According to Dr. Orange, exercise “may also create a more hostile environment for cancer cells to grow.” That’s not a guarantee, and it’s not a promise of prevention. But it’s a meaningful way to describe how movement can shift the internal conditions that may support long-term health.

What the Research Can and Cannot Tell Us

It’s worth being clear about what this research can’t tell us. This was not a clinical trial in people with cancer, and it does not show that 10 minutes of exercise prevents cancer. It used blood samples from adults who were “apparently healthy,” and it tested effects in a laboratory cell model. That’s a strength for studying mechanisms, but it’s not the same as observing real-world disease outcomes.

The exercise test was also maximal effort—intense and short—which matters because many clients cannot or should not train at maximal intensity, especially if they have cardiovascular risk factors, orthopedic limitations, low fitness levels or are undergoing medical treatment. The study authors also note that the acute biological response to exercise can depend on intensity, and we don’t yet know whether lower-intensity sessions produce the same serum effects observed here. So, the practical message isn’t “everyone should do maximal cycling.” The message is that the body responds quickly to exercise, and intensity is one lever that can shape that response, but only if and when it’s appropriate.

Practical Application for Health and Exercise Professionals

As a health and exercise professional, this study offers you an evidence-based way to validate short, purposeful bouts of activity. When a client says they only have 10 minutes, you can explain that research suggests even a single short session can trigger measurable shifts in the bloodstream that influence health-related processes in cells. That’s not hype. It’s a motivating, science-backed reframe.

It also supports a programming mindset that many successful coaches already use: Build consistency first, then layer in challenge. For generally healthy clients, “challenge” might mean brief intervals on a bike, incline walking, short conditioning circuits or tempo changes during steady-state work. You’re not chasing exhaustion; you’re selecting doses of effort that are safe, repeatable and matched to the client’s capacity. The study’s protocol was maximal, but the coaching principle you can borrow is that higher effort changes the internal signal in a way that may matter and, importantly, that can be approached progressively.

For clients with a cancer history or elevated medical complexity, the opportunity is education and collaboration. You can use this research to explain why movement is often recommended as part of survivorship care and overall risk reduction, while staying in your lane: You’re supporting fitness, function, fatigue management and overall health. Encourage clients to coordinate with their medical team when needed, monitor symptoms carefully, and use intensity tools like rating of perceived exertion and the talk test to guide effort. The point is not to replicate a lab protocol; it’s to help clients accumulate meaningful movement safely and consistently.

Finally, this study is a reminder to broaden what “progress” means. A client who doesn’t see immediate body-composition changes may still be getting powerful benefits from each session. That framing can reduce all-or-nothing thinking and improve adherence, which, in the long run, is where most of the benefit lives.

As Dr. Orange explains, “It’s a reminder that every step, every session, counts when it comes to doing your best to protect your health.” That’s a coaching message worth repeating, because it’s both motivating and grounded in what this study actually tested.

The Bottom Line

This research adds to a growing body of evidence that exercise is more than a mechanical act—it’s a biological signal. In this study, a brief, maximal bout of cycling changed what was present in the bloodstream immediately afterward, and that post-exercise serum influenced DNA damage repair and gene activity in colon cancer cells in a lab setting. For health and exercise professionals, the practical value is clear: Short bouts can matter, intensity can be a useful tool when appropriate, and every session is an opportunity to support a healthier internal environment, even when the results aren’t visible right away.