Carlos Aparecido Zamai

Effects of a Physical Activity Program on Cardiac Cycle Events in Sedentary Individuals

Physical activities – walking, fitness and ballroom dancing - were offered over a six month period (April-September 2007). Sixty-minute classes were offered three times a week, in the morning, at the Physical Activities Stand, in a program called Mexa-se (Move your Body). Each class was divided into three stages: warm-up (10 minutes); the class itself (45 minutes); and stretching and relaxation exercises performed to background music, in the last phase (05 minutes). Twenty-five sedentary individuals took part in this study: n=09 men (ages 34 to 50) and n=16 women (ages 31 to 51). This study aims to verify the effects of the program on the following cardiac cycle events: Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP), Diastolic Blood Pressure (DBP) and heart rate (HR). The Naughton Protocol was applied and the individuals were evaluated and re-evaluated according to the aforesaid methodology. Heart rate, Systolic Blood Pressure and Diastolic Blood Pressure at rest and during post-exercise recovery were statistically analyzed t-test, with p>0.05 significance level. At rest: in both sexes, there was no significant difference between evaluation and re-evaluation heart rate; regarding SBP and DBP, only the men showed a significant difference between evaluation and re-evaluation values. At recovery: there was no difference between evaluation and re-evaluation heart rate in either group (men and women); SBP was different between evaluation and re-evaluation in both groups from the first minute up to the sixth minute; regarding DBP, there was no difference in the first minute, but from the second minute onward, both groups showed a difference between evaluation and re-evaluation values. It should also be noted that at evaluation, both groups completed the Protocol to the 4 th stage, and at re-evaluation, 37.5% of females and 33.3% of males completed the Protocol to the 5 th and 6 th stages. For statistical analysis, we only included up to the 4 th stage in the re-evaluation, which showed a significant difference for the male group but not for the female group. Through these results, we observed that the offered physical activity program was an efficient means to a cardiac cycle events.