The influence of exercise order on strength performance in post menopause women

OBJECTIVE: Verify the influence of different exercise orders on the performance of the number of maximal repetitions in older women. METHODS: Twelve older women (65.7 ± 5.6 years, 66.9 ± 9.5 kg, 1.56 ± 0.67 m, 27.4 ± 3.6 kg/m2) underwent four nonconsecutive visits and two different orders of Resistance Training. At the first visit, the volunteers were submitted to anamnesis, anthropometric evaluation and a 10RM test. On the second visit, a re-test of 10RM was performed. On the third and fourth visits, the volunteers performed two exercise sequences: sequence A: bench press, latissimus pulldown close grip, biceps curl, triceps extension; for sequence B the order was inverted. Performance was measured by the number of repetitions in each exercise. To determine differences in performance for sequence A vs. sequence B, repeated measures were performed by two-way ANOVA followed by the Tuckey post-hoc test. RESULTS: The number of repetitions of each exercise varied significantly for the bench press, biceps curl and triceps extension between the exercise sequences. CONCLUSIONS: The order of the exercises performed in a resistance training session can affect the performance in the number of repetitions in older women.