The Effect of Resistance Training at Home on Different Dimensions of Quality of Life, Blood Pressure and Indices of Abdominal Obesity in The Elderly During Covid -19 quarantine

The COVID-19 outbreak and stay-at-home orders can cause many physical and psychological problems in the elderly. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of exercise at home on various aspects of quality of life, blood pressure and abdominal obesity indicators in older men during the COVID-19 quarantine.

In this quasi-experimental study, 20 men (65.20±5.35 years) were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly divided into two experimental (n= 10) and control (n = 10) groups. The experimental group performed resistance training for 8 weeks (two sessions per week). At the beginning and end of the training period, abdominal obesity, blood pressure and quality of life of the elderly were assessed and measured according to a questionnaire of the World Health Organization. Shapiro-Wilk test was used to evaluate the normality of data distribution, as well as independent t-test and paired t-test were applied to analyze the data between groups and within groups at a significance level of P<0.05.

Eight-week resistance training at home significantly increased the quality of life, and its components including physical health, mental health, social relationships and environmental health (P≤0.05). Abdominal obesity indices such as waist circumference, waist to height ratio and fat percentage also decreased significantly (P≤0.05).

According to the results of the present study, this type of exercise can be suggested to sports specialists and trainers as a suitable training method for the health of the elderly during quarantine.