Programa de treinamento de HIIT combinado com exercício resistido e seus efeitos sobre a capacidade física e composição corporal de adultos com lesão medular

Abstract

The practice of physical exercise by the population with spinal cord injury is closely related to their health and functionality. The higher the level of physical inactivity, the more susceptible the individual is to perform health complications, in addition to reducing cardiorespiratory capacity, decreasing strength and increasing adiposity. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the effect of a HIIT training program combined with resistance exercise on cardiorespiratory fitness, strength and body composition of adults with spinal cord injuries participating in a university extension project. This research is characterized as almost experimental and had 5 participants. The physical exercise program consisted of combining HIIT with resistance training and the intervention was carried out for 6 weeks, twice a week, lasting 60 minutes per session. Before and after the intervention, the tests to assess cardiorespiratory capacity, strength and body composition of the participants. For data analysis, descriptive statistics using frequency distribution were used to categorize a sample and test Shapiro Wilk to verify whether the variables had a normal distribution. Then, to compare how variables before and after exercise, inferential statistics were used, using the Student test, a significance of 0.05 was adopted, and Cohen selected the effect size. At the end of the study, no significant differences were found in cardiorespiratory fitness and body composition. However, its Δ variations favored the improvement of the variables, with a very large to small effect size, respectively. As well as, the reduction of an obesity case based on the% MGT, exposes the clinical importance of physical exercise in improving health. In addition, there was a significant difference in the 1RM test in 3 of the 5 exercises. Thus, it is concluded that the training method (HIIT combined with resistance exercises) proved to be safe and with favorable clinical effects for participants with SCI, and HIIT may be an option for this population with less time available to practice physical activity. Suggested that further studies with larger groups and different levels of spinal cord injury should be encouraged to better understand the topic.