Effects of 8-week online, supervised high-intensity interval training on the parameters related to the anaerobic threshold, body weight, and body composition during pregnancy: a randomized controlled trial

• Autor(a) principal: Yu, Hongli
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Santos-Rocha, RA, Radzimiński, Łukasz, Jastrzębski, Zbigniew, Bonisławska, Iwona, Szwarc, Andrzej, Szumilewicz, Anna
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.15/4244
• topic: pregnancy; high-intensity interval training; body composition; anaerobic exercise capacity; anaerobic threshold

We aimed to assess the effects of an 8-week, online high-intensity interval training (HIIT) program on the parameters related to the anaerobic threshold (AT), body weight, and body compo sition in pregnant women. A total of 69 Caucasian women with an uncomplicated singleton preg nancy (age: 31 ± 4 years; gestational age: 22 ± 5 weeks; mean ± standard deviation) were randomly allocated to either an 8-week HIIT program (HIIT group) or to a comparative 8-week educational program (EDU group). Our most important finding was that even with the 8-week progression of pregnancy and physiological weight gain, the HIIT group maintained the same level of parameters related to AT: volume of oxygen at the AT (VO2/AT), percentage of maximal oxygen uptake at the AT (%VO2max/AT), and heart rate at the AT (HR/AT). In contrast, in the EDU group we observed a substantial deterioration of parameters related to the AT. The HIIT intervention substantially re duced the fat mass percentage (median: 30 to 28%; p < 0.01) and improved the total fat-free mass percentage (median: 70% to 72%; p < 0.01). In the EDU group, the body composition did not change significantly. An online, supervised HIIT program may be used to prevent the pregnancy-related risk of excessive weight gain and reduction in exercise capacity without yielding adverse obstetric or neonatal outcomes.