Positive effects of progressive resistance training on physical fitness indices in patients with multiple sclerosis

Some studies have shown the effectiveness of exercise training on the side effects of MS patinas. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of progressive resistance training on balance, body fat percentage, muscle strength and endurance in men and women with MS disease.

18 MS patients with (mean of age: 29.4±7.9 years, weight: 69.7±14.4 kg) were selected by targeted sampling and then randomly assigned into two groups as experimental (n=10) and control (n=8). The experimental group performed resistance exercise for 12 weeks, three sessions per week, each session for 70 minutes with 50 - 80% of 1RM, while, the control group did not perform any regular exercise during course of the study. The stork test was used to evaluate the static balance. For measuring body fat percentage, muscle strength and muscular endurance, the Yuhasz test, one repetition maximum test and dynamic muscular endurance test were used, respectively. For statistical analysis, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measure and Bonferroni post hoc test at level of 0.05 were used.

The results showed that after 12 weeks of resistance training, there were significant increase in muscle strength (p=0.0001), balance (p=0.002), muscular endurance (p=0.0001) in experimental group, while, body fat percentage significantly decreased (P=0.02). Moreover, there was also a significant difference between the two for 1RM after post test measurements based on experimental group.

The finding of present study indicated that 12 weeks of moderate-intensity resistance training can improve the physical fitness indices of multiple sclerosis patients and provide a suitable prescription for improving the physical fitness of these patients.