Muscle function and functional ability improves more in community-dwelling older women with a mixed-strength training programme

Background: supervised training can reach a limited number of elderly people. Objective: to determine the impact of a 1-year mixed-strength training programme on muscle function (MF), functional ability (FA) and physical activity (PA). Setting: twice-a-week hospital-based exercise classes and a once-a-week home session. Participants: twenty-eight healthy community-dwelling men and women on the training programme and 20 controls aged over 75 years. Methods: training with two multi-gym machines for the lower limbs at 60% of the repetition maximum (1RM). At-home subjects used elastic bands. Measurements: maximum isometric strength of knee extensors (KE), ankle plantar flexors (PF), leg extensor power (LEP), functional reach (FR), chair rise 1 (CR1) and 10 times (CR10), bed rise (BR), six-minute walking test (6MWT), stair climbing (SC), get-up-and-go (GU&G), one-leg standing (1LS). PA was assessed with the Paqap(C) questionnaire. Results: women were significantly weaker than men at baseline: -47% for KE and -59% for PF. Training induced significant gains in MF and FA in the training females; males improved significantly only in FA. PA levels increased non-significantly (2%) in all of the training group. Conclusions: long-term mixed-strength programmes can improve MF and FA in elderly females, and FA in elderly males.