Training impulses: A method to quantify exercise intensity in postmenopausal obese women

Nine obese postmenopausal women aged 59±6.3 years having a body mass index of 35.2±2.0 kg/m2 performed a 12-week training protocol three times a week. Each training session, lasting about 80 min, consisted of general warmup and stretching exercises, free-body exercises, exercises with small implements (clubs, dumbbells, medicine ball), aerobic activity consisting of walking/running on the treadmill or open ground and cooling-down exercises. The training impulse method was utilized to indirectly quantify the amount of exercise intensity on the basis of heart rate values assessed during training sessions. The value adopted for training impulses prescribed for patients was about 130 arbitrary units and corresponded to 50 ∼ 60% of their maximum oxygen consumption. Immediately before and at the end of the training patient took an incremental cycle-ergometer test (20W every 3 min), up to exhaustion, in such a way as to assess maximum values of: oxygen consumption, workload and the ratio between these two variables (i.e. the oxidative cost), heart rate, systolic and diastolic arterial blood pressures. At the trial end, in correspondence of the maximum workload reached during the cycle-ergometer exercise, both body mass and body mass index had significantly decreased, as had diastolic arterial blood pressure and oxidative cost of exercise, while fat free mass had increased, when refered to the trial entry. It can be concluded that the precise amount of training, as established by utilizing training impulses, may facilitate the choice of the strategy to ameliorate physical and mental health in postmenopausal obese women.