Pre-Participation Physical Fitness does not Influence Adherence to a Supervised Exercise Program

Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation tends to reduce mortality. However, it requires medium/long-term adherence to regular physical exercise. It is relevant to identify the variables that affect adherence to an supervised exercise program (SEP).

To evaluate the influence of pre-participation levels of aerobic and non-aerobic physical fitness components in medium-term adherence to SEP.

A total of 567 SEP participants (65 ± 12 years) (68% men) were studied. Participants adherent to the program for less than 6 months (48%) (non-adherent - NAD) were compared with 52% of participants who were adherent for 6 months or more (adherents - AD). In the non-aerobic fitness, flexibility (FLX) (Flexitest) and muscle power (MPW)/body weight in standing rowing (watts/kg) were evaluated while aerobic fitness was obtained by direct measure of VO2max/body weight (VO2). These measurements were normatized for sex and age based on percentiles (P) (P-FLX/P-MPW) of reference data or percentages of predicted (P-VO2). Additionally, AD and NAD with extreme results (tertiles) were simultaneously compared for the three variables.

There was no difference between AD and NAD for non-aerobic results, in median [P25-P75], P-FLX: 30 [13-56] and 31 [9-52], respectively, (p = 0.69) and P-MPW: 34 [17-58] and 36 [16-62], respectively (p = 0.96), and for aerobic results (mean ± standard error) P-VO2 (75.9 ± 1.3% and 75.0 ± 1.3%, respectively) (p = 0.83). When comparing extreme tertiles, a difference was found for P-MPW in the lower tertile only, with a slight advantage of AD over NAD- 9 [5-16] versus 4 [1-11] (p = 0.04).

Although awareness of the pre-participation levels of aerobic and non-aerobic physical fitness components is useful for individualized exercise prescription, these variables do not seem to influence medium-term adherence to SEP.