One-year follow-up study on the effect of functional fitness promotion program for community-dwelling elderly people

The purpose of this study was to examine exercise adherence and effectiveness on functional fitness of health promotion program 1 year after the end of intervention. The program was constituted the home-based exercise program and the facilitating program for exercise adherence and participation. The subjects were 46 aged persons (18 males ; 69.7±4.9 yrs, 28 females ; 68.3±5.4 yrs) in the intervention group (IG) and 46 aged persons (13 males ; 68.7±3.4 yrs, 33 females ; 69.0±4.6 yrs) in the control group (CG). The exercise program was composed of muscle stretching for flexibility, muscle conditioning for muscle strength, and brisk walking for aerobics. The facilitating program, which was designed to enhance motivation for continued involvement in exercise program, included educational and motivational strategies such as understanding functional fitness level, consulting for individual setting of exercise goal, learning on health benefits of regular exercise and exercise skills, group meeting for exchanging information on exercise experiences, exercising at home and community, and self-monitoring on exercise mode and time. The facilitating program was applied in the periodic classes which were held every 2 weeks over the period of 5 months. At 1 year after the end of intervention, subjects were asked for participation to follow-up measurement and interview. Twenty-three subjects (9 men, and 14 women) in IG and 16 subjects (4 men and 12 women) in CG attended the follow-up study. During the follow-up period for 1 year after the end of intervention, 66.7% of IG subjects continued brisk walking, and 53.3% of IG subjects continued muscle stretching and muscle conditioning. The subjects in IG were divided into two groups according to the adherence to the exercise program. Twelve subjects (37.5%) who continued to practice every three exercise program throughout the follow-up period were the maintenance group (MG) and the rest of the subjects (86.5%) were non- maintenance group (NMG). During follow-up period, total energy expenditure of habitual exercises were maintained in MG, NMG and CG. The value in MG was higher than those of other groups. There were significant differences of changes in walking, hand-working, and self-care working during follow-up period among the three groups, but no difference of changes in sitting-and- standing was observed. Knee extension muscle strength, 3 minute-walking distance, and sit-and-reach were maintained to the post intervention level at 1 year after the end of the intervention. These results suggest that the functional fitness promotion program was effective for the elderly persons who responded to the intervention program to maintain exercise program and habitual exercise after the end of intervention, but not effective for the elderly persons who did not respond to the intervention program.