Effects of six weeks of detraining on retention of functional fitness of old people after nine weeks of multicomponent training

Correspondence to:
 Dr Toraman
 Akdeniz University School of Physical Education and Sports, Health Sciences, Antalya 07058, Turkey; [email protected]

Functional fitness is defined as having the physical capacity to perform normal everyday activities safely and independently without undue fatigue and includes components such as lower and upper body muscle strength, lower and upper body flexibility, aerobic endurance, and motor agility/dynamic balance.¹ The percentage decline in the functional fitness items is generally consistent with age related declines in physical performance.²

Despite studies suggesting that training helps to attenuate the effects of aging on functional fitness,^3–5 it is not known for how long these beneficial effects are maintained. Detraining often occurs in previously sedentary people who participate in exercise for several weeks or months and then stop.⁶ Most studies of detraining in elderly people have reported only partial loss of the gains in muscular strength achieved during training.^{7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14} However, one study reported a return to pre-training strength after one year of detraining,¹⁵ and another showed an even greater decline to a level below pre-training values.¹⁶ In contrast, gains in cardiovascular fitness last longer in elderly people.⁷ Furthermore, few studies have examined the effects of detraining on functional capacity in elderly people.^10,12,15,16

Therefore the purposes of this study were to evaluate the effects of six weeks detraining on functional fitness in young-old (YO, aged 60–73 years) and older (O, aged 74–86 years) subjects, and to determine whether functional fitness responded differently to detraining in these age groups.

METHODS

Participants

Forty two elderly adults were initially recruited to take part in a randomised trial designed to investigate the effects of a nine week exercise training programme on functional fitness and body composition³ and the age responses to the multicomponent training.⁴ Subjects were volunteers who were older than 60 years, healthy, and without serious cardiovascular or musculoskeletal diseases, living independently in a retirement home, performing activities of daily living without mobility aids, and had a standardised mini-mental state examination score ⩾20. Twenty two subjects were assigned to the YO group (aged 60–73 years), and 20 to the O group (aged 74–86 years). The YO and O groups were...