Exercising One Day a Week Helps Older Women Improve Strength and Endurance

Older women over 60 need to exercise just one day a week in order to improve their strength and endurance.

In older people even a small decline in strength and stability greatly impairs their ability to perform day to day tasks. The best remedy for this is to exercise as it literally cures diseases. For older women exercising even one day in a week gives lasting benefits.

 The latest study documented in the journal of Strength and Conditioning Research by researchers at the University of Alabama, Birmingham reveals that older women over the age of 60 can improve their strength and endurance by exercising just one day a week.

"One of the biggest barriers to exercise training for the older female population is adherence, and one of the key findings in this study is that doing a little bit of exercise can go a long way," said Gordon Fisher, Ph.D., primary investigator of the study: "Frequency of Combined Resistance and Aerobic Training in Older Women."

The researchers came up with this conclusion after monitoring 63 women who performed combined aerobic exercise training (AET) and resistance exercise training (RET) for 16 weeks. The participants were divided into three groups in which the first group performed AET and RET once a week, the second group performed AET and RET twice a week and the third group performed the same thrice a week.

On examining all the participants from all the three groups, they noticed a significant increase in muscular strength, cardiovascular fitness and functional task. But no significant difference in the outcomes of all the three groups was noticed. The participants in the three groups increased their lean muscle mass but their body weight remained the same. This is important as it is essential for older people not to lose muscle mass.

The researchers even assessed the participants' efficiency as well ability to perform day to day tasks such as sitting, walking and climbing stairs. Before the study, the participants were made to complete a 3 mile per hour walk test that determined their heart rate as well oxygen consumption. Their average heart rate was 110 beats per minute. But after 16 weeks of AET and RET training, their average heart rate was 92 beats per minutes during the walk. This indicated that the older women required lesser effort to complete their daily task after following the exercise program.

The study highlights the fact that performing one AET and one RET workout one day in a week offers a lot of benefits to older women's overall quality of life as well as health. This study contradicts the previous finding on exercise that states the more the better.