Institutional Guidelines for Resistance Exercise Training in Cardiovascular Disease: A Systematic Review

Institutional position stands are useful for practitioners when designing exercise routines for specific populations. Resistance training has been included in programs for patients with cardiovascular disease.

The objective of this systematic review was to analyze institutional guidelines providing recommendations for resistance training applied to cardiovascular disease.

PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases were searched from inception until 30 April, 2018.

Of 994 articles initially found, 13 position stands were retained. Consensual indications occurred only for number of sets (one to three sets) and training frequency (two to three sessions/week). Recommendations concerning other major training variables were discordant regarding workload (none or loads ranging from < 30% up to 80% 1 repetition maximum) and exercise order (none or vaguely indicating alternation of muscle groups or circuit format), or insufficient regarding intervals between sets and exercises or number and type of exercises. Overall, guidelines lack recommendations of specific procedures for each type of disease at different severity levels, cardiovascular risk during exercise, or criteria for training progression.

Recommendations provided by institutional guidelines appear to be insufficient to support adequate resistance training prescription in the context of cardiovascular disease.