Objectives: Old age is a period accompanied by automatic, gradual, and advancing corrosive changes in most organs and physiological systems of the body. One such important change is in the systems involved in balance control, which could expose older people to serious damages, such as bone fractures that are associated with high medical costs, due to poor balance. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of yoga and Pilates exercises on motor performance of the elderly people.
Methods & Materials: This study was conducted using a quasi-experimental design. A total of 60 obese subjects (mean[SD] age: 62.2[1.6] years) were randomly assigned into 3 groups of yoga (n=20), Pilates (n=20), and control (n=20). Yoga practices, which comprised Asana training, Pranaya training, and meditation, were done 3 times a week, for 8 weeks. The Pilates course had 3 sections of warming up, major practices, and cooling down. These practices were done in positions of lying down, sitting, and standing. The movements started from simple activities and gradually got more complicated. Motor performance tests of static and dynamic balance, flexibility, and lower extremity strength were administered. The Stork test was used to evaluate standing balance in terms of seconds and milliseconds. In this test, the old person stands on the dominant foot and put the other foot on the medial part of bearing knee in such a way that the toes point downward and the hands rest on the iliac crests. Then, with the sign of the examiner, the subject lifts his or her dominant heel and try to keep the balance as much as possible. The flexibility was evaluated with Welz test. The subject sits on the ground with legs straight and attaches his or her feet to the flexometer box, then leans forward without bending knees, move the box levers to the front and leans forward as much as possible. The test of climbing stairs up and down was used to measure dynamic stability. In this test, the subjects climb up and down 7 times from a 20-cm height or chair. The subject climbs with one leg and then lifts another leg. Next, he or she brings down the first leg and then another leg. Each climbing is considered one time. When the subject did this activity 7 times, the time is recorded. The standing chair test is used to evaluate the muscle strength of lower extremity and legs. While sitting on the edge of the chair, the subject should stand with the best of his or her power in 30 seconds and then returns to sitting position. The mean of number of activities during two 30-second cycle is regarded as the final record. To analyze the data, we used 1-way ANOVA test and post hoc Tukey test.
Results: The results indicated that both Pilates and yoga exercises significantly improved the scores of static balance, dynamic balance, power of lower extremity muscles, and flexibility (P<0.05) while no significant difference was found between 2 experimental groups with regard to improvement in movement performance.
Conclusion: According to our research findings, yoga and Pilate’s exercises can improve static and dynamic balance and lower extremities strength. Since the improvement in the variables of movement performance has a significant effect on preventing falling of older people, we recommend that these exercises should be followed by the older people.