Efeitos do Tai Chi Chuan na aptidão cardiorrespiratória, força dos músculos extensores do joelho e composição corporal em mulheres idosas

Alessandra Bastos Matida

Tai Chi Chuan (TCC) is a martial art style (kung fu or wushu) widely practiced in China for centuries and it is described like an activity capable of providing improvements in the physical conditioning, health and social integration to senior individuals. The purpose of this controlled experimental study was to verify the effects of TCC program on maximal oxygen uptake (VO2) and exertion time (T) for cardiorespiratory fitness, peak torque (PT) for knee extensor muscular strength, fat free mass (FFM) and body fat percentage (BFP) for body composition (BC) in 34 healthy elderly women, who did not practice any form of oriented physical activity. TCC group (G1) included 16 subjects (age 66.194.78 yr) and Control Group (G2) included 18 subjects (age 72.946.24 yr). G1 practiced the 24 Forms Yang Style TCC during 24 weeks, 2 times/week. Each session included 15 min of warm-up, 20 min of TCC form practice and 15 min of cool down. VO2 and T by ergospirometry (ERGO) in treadmill test; PT in isokinetic dynamometer; FFM and BFP in Dual X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) were evaluated before and at the end of this intervention. G1 showed 8.20% increase in VO2 (p = 0.001), 8.20% increase in T (p = 0.01), 26% increase in PT (p = 0.001) and no significant changes in the BC variables (p>0.05) in relation to G2. No significant correlation was observed between both variables ERGO and BC or PT and BC in this experiment. These results indicate that TCC program is effective for improving ERGO and PT, but not BC, in elderly women, and indicate that ERGO and PT is not necessarily linked to BC in this practice.

Efeitos do Tai Chi Chuan na aptidão cardiorrespiratória, força dos músculos extensores do joelho e composição corporal em mulheres idosas

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