Pilot study: can older inactive adults learn how to reach the required intensity of physical activity guideline?

Abstract

Most individuals do not reach the recommended physical activity level of at least 150 minutes of aerobic exercise (AE) at moderate-to-vigorous intensity per week. For example, only 13% of older Canadian adults reach World Health Organization physical activity guideline (PAG). One of the reasons might be a difficulty identifying the required intensity. Twenty-five inactive older adults received one session about the AE-PAG and how to use a tool or strategy to help them identify AE intensity: heart-rate (HR) monitor (% of maximal HR; N = 9); manual pulse (% of maximal HR; N = 8); or pedometer (walking cadence; N = 8). Participants had 8 weeks to implement their specific tool with the aim of reaching the PAG by walking at home. At pre- and post-intervention, the capacity to identify AE intensity and AE time spent at moderate-to-vigorous intensity were evaluated. Only the two groups using a tool increased total AE time (both P < 0.01), but no group improved the time spent at moderate-to-vigorous intensity. No significant improvement was observed in the ability to correctly identify AE intensity in any of the groups, but a tendency was observed in the pedometer group (P = 0.07). Using walking cadence with a pedometer should be explored as a tool to reach the PAG as it is inexpensive, easy to use, and seemed the best tool to improve both AE time and perception of intensity.

Walking Cadence and Mortality Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults

“…8,12 It has been recommended that ≥100 steps minute −1 is a walking cadence consistent with moderate-intensity physical activity 13 and is appropriate for older adults. 12 The use of walking cadence as a method to monitor the intensity of physical activity among older adults is intuitive, economical, and encourages the use of pedometers, 14,15 which have been successfully used to promote physical activity in clinical practice. [16][17][18] Despite the use of walking cadence to quantify intensity of physical activity, it is unknown whether walking cadence could be additionally leveraged as an objective measure of physical function to prognosticate mortality.…”

“…19 Establishing the relationship between walking cadence and mortality may help clinicians convey the prognostic importance of physical function to patients using a metric that is readily understood by older adults. 14 Such metrics may empower motivated older adults with the ability to self-monitor their physical function longitudinally.…”

People who perceive themselves as active cannot identify the intensity recommended by the international physical activity guidelines

“…This proportion is even lower from an inactive older sample (20%) previously studied by our group. 10 The biggest difference between the two samples is the fact that a large proportion of individuals who self-identify as active overestimated moderate intensity while older adults underestimated moderate intensity. 10 A previous study has suggested that regular exercisers may underestimate physical exertion when using a self-perception measure normally based on the Borg scale, 16 which helps exercisers evaluate their intensity perception on a scale between 6 and 20 or 0 and 10.…”

“…In a previous study, it was shown that only 20% of inactive older adults could identify moderate intensity. 10 It is also important to understand if active people can identify moderate intensity because they might be the segment of the population most receptive to optimizing their aerobic exercise sessions. If active people underestimate exercise intensity (perceive the task to be moderate, but it is actually at low intensity based on the individual physiological response), they might decrease the odds of meeting their goals and expectations, therefore negatively impacting their exercise adherence and PA levels.…”

Efficacy of moderate-intensity walking provided feedback by ECE PEDO on abdominal fat in overweight and obese women: A randomized, exercise study

“…Achieving the moderate-intensity in an exercise program associated with a pedometer using steps per min (cadence) seems to be a promising method. Bouchard et al [10] suggested that the use of a pedometer to estimate the exercise intensity and reported that this method should be improved to the ability to estimate the moderate intensity.…”