INFLUENCE OF A PERSONALIZED DIGITAL HOME TRAINING ON LEG STRENGTH OF OLDER ADULTS
VENEK, V, NEUWIRTH, C., JUNGREITMAYR, S, RING-DIMITRIOU, S (2020): INFLUENCE OF A PERSONALIZED DIGITAL HOME TRAINING ON LEG STRENGTH OF OLDER ADULTS In: Book of Abstracts of the 25th Annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science
INTRODUCTION:
The lack of a regular muscle-strengthening training poses a health risk, especially for older adults. Thus, research areas such as Active and Assisted Living (AAL) aim at investigating the effect of technologies on older adults’ lives. Tablet-based intervention studies, limited by sample size and time, revealed significant improvements on functional performance [1]. However, the mentioned applications mainly focussed on providing training content without feedback or monitoring of exercise execution. Thus, we aimed at investigating the influence of a personalized home strength training called ILSE on older adults’ physical fitness from a 14-weeks field trial.
METHODS:
The AAL solution ILSE consists of a motion promotion app with versions for a 3D camera system (Orbbec Persee) and Android tablets. The home training function is provided on both versions to monitor the number of executed exercises. ILSE on the 3D camera system allows an extended training experience including recognition of postures, counting and notifications of unfavourable postures. 77 healthy older adults (avg 65 yrs) served as ILSE test-group over 14 weeks. Furthermore, leg strength was assessed with the 30-second Chair Rise Test (30s-CRT, number of repetitions/30s) in the test-group and in 127 adults of the control group (n=204 in total) at the beginning and the end of the intervention (Δ number of repetitions/30s). Thus, we analysed the difference in functional fitness using Wilcoxon rank-sum test between a control group (CG;n=127), intervention group using solely tablet or camera system (ISG;n=38) and intervention group using both systems for their training (IBG;n=39). Additionally, within the intervention group (n=77) the correlation between number of executed exercises and the change in leg strength was determined using Pearson’s correlation coefficient. The significance level was set to 0.05.
RESULTS:
No significant difference in leg strength was found between intervention and control group. Within the intervention group the change in leg strength was not associated to the number of completed exercises monitored by ILSE. On average ILSE improved the leg strength when using only one training device (ISG:Δ 0.4±3.2) compared to people using both devices (IBG:Δ 0.1±2.6), however, no significance could be found.
CONCLUSION:
Although no group difference could be found yet, this data analysis points toward the necessity to focus on one training device in the development and implementation phase to tailor precise AAL solutions. If the 3D camera system will generate more benefit in establishing a training routine in older adults has to be clarified including the upcoming second 14-weeks trial in the analysis. 1. Dasgupta,D.; Chaudhry,B.; Koh,E.; Chawla, N.V. A Survey of Tablet Applications for Promoting Successful Aging in Older Adults. IEEE Access2016, 4, 9005–9017.
