Acute effect of resistance training without recovery intervals on the blood pressure of comorbidity-free elderly women: a pilot study

Purpose

It is well documented that post-exercise hypotension (PEH) is found both in people with borderline hypertension and in hypertensive subjects. However, PEH in normotensive individuals remains poorly understood. This study aims at analyzing the potential acute effect of a resistance training session without recovery intervals between sets and exercises in the blood pressure (BP) in normotensive elderly. We evaluated 6 elderly women with a mean age of 65 ± 3 years who had no previous history of hypertension or any cardiovascular disease. They underwent a resistance training session consisting of 3 sets of 8 maximum repetitions without recovery intervals between the sets. We measured their BP before, right after and 20 min after resistance training.

Results

There was a significant difference (p value = 0.0464) between systolic BP before the training session (mean 126.50 ± 7.34 mmHg) and 20 min after it (mean 110.16 ± 10.90 mmHg). There was no significant difference between systolic BP before the training and right after the training (mean 126.50 ± 7.34 mmHg vs. mean 129.33 ± 10.17 mmHg, p value > 0.05). We observed a significant difference between diastolic BP right after the training (mean 66.66 ± 9.09 mmHg), p value = 0.0277 and 20 min after it (mean 66.66 ± 8.93 mmHg), p value = 0.0273 when compared to the initial values (mean 71.5 ± 10.70 mmHg).

Conclusions

These findings show that there was an acute reduction in BP in the population investigated after the resistance exercise without any recovery interval.