The Effect of Selected Pilates Exercises on the Postural control and Quality of Life in Older Women with a history of falls

Balance deficit is one of the consequences of aging that cause falls and impairment and disability in elderly during functional activities. All of them show the importance of preventing falls in the elderly. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of selected Pilates exercises on the postural control and quality of life in older women with a history of falls. This study is a semi experimental research with pretest-post test plan, in which 30 elderly women aged 60 to 75 years were randomly divided into two equal experimental groups of 15 selected Pilates and a control group (n=15). The experimental group performed selected Pilates exercises (8 weeks, 3 sessions per week and 45 minutes per session). Before and after 8 weeks of training, the Sharpand Romberg and quality of life questionnaire were used to measure the postural control and quality of life of respectively. Analysis of covariance and MANOVA was used for all analyzes. The significance level was set at 0.05.The findings of this study showed that selected Pilates exercises had significant effect on the improvement of postural control and quality of life in older women with a history of falls (P≤0.05). However, there were no significant differences in the control group (p>0.05).This study showed that selected pilates exercises may had main effect on the improvement of postural control and quality of life in the elderly women with falling history. Therefore it is recommended in elderly women with falling history to prevent falling and increase postural control and quality of lif in these subjects.