The Effect of Selected Pilates Exercises on Balance, Blood Pressure, and Body Composition of Inactive Healthy Elderly Women

Background and Aim: Aging is a process during which most of the body’s physiological functions are gradually weakened and disrupted. This study aimed to investigate the effect of 8 weeks of selected Pilates exercises on balance, body composition, and blood pressure in healthy older women. Materials and Methods: This randomized quasi-experimental study with the pre-test, posttest design was performed on 20 inactive older women with a Mean±SD age of 62±2.5 years, Mean±SD height of 160.6±4.51 cm, and Mean±SD weight of 67.70±4.60 kg. The participants were randomly divided into experimental (n=10) and control (n=10) groups. The experimental group participated in the Pilates program for 8 weeks, 3 sessions per week. During this period, the control group did not participate in any training program. The studied variables in the training group were evaluated at the beginning and after 8 weeks of the program. Finally, the results of pre-test and post-test exercises of both groups were compared. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to ensure the normality of the data and paired t test and analysis of variance was used to analyze intra-group and inter-group findings, respectively. The significance level was set as less than 0.05. Results: Eight weeks of Pilates training significantly increased static (P=0.04) and dynamic (P=0.0001) balance and significantly decreased body fat percentage (P=0.001) in older women. However, the results showed that Pilates exercises had no significant effect on blood pressure and waist to hip ratio in older women (P≥0.05). Conclusion: Pilates exercises can improve balance and reduce the percentage of body fat in older women, and it is a suitable and inexpensive alternative or complementary treatment to improve balance and reduce falls. However, more studies are needed on the effect of this type of exercise on other indicators of elderly health.