The Effect of Aquatic Balance Exercise With Weighted Vest on the Balance Recovery Strategy of Middle-Aged Women

Purpose: Disturbances in balance and also regaining the balance strategy is very important in the middle-aged women who are near their menopause and subject to severe hormonal and physiological changes, reduced muscle strength, and decreased bone density. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of balance training in the water with and without the weighted vest on the balance recovery strategy of middle-aged women affected with a balance disorder. Methods: Present study was a quasi-experimental study conducted on 26 middle-aged women. They were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly divided into two groups: balance training group in water with weighted vest (13 women), and balance training group in water without weighted vest (13 people). In order to assess the balance strategy recovery, the electromyography activity of the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and rectus femoris muscles around the hip joint and lateral gastrocnemius, peroneus longus, and anterior tibialis muscles around the ankle joint was recorded during the drop-landing task. The water balance training was performed for 6 weeks, three sessions per week, each session for 45 minutes. After 6 weeks of training, all pretest stages were repeated in the post-test. Shapiro-Wilk and ANCOVA tests were used for analyzing the obtained data. The significance level was set at 0.05 for all tests. Results: The Independent t test results showed no significant difference between demographic information of the two groups (P<0.05). The results of ANCOVA showed that the recovery balance strategy of middle-aged women in the group of water balance training with weighed shirt had significantly improved (P<0.05). Also, the eta coefficient was 0.76 which indicates relatively large amount of impact exercises.  Conclusion: Doing balance exercises in water with weighted vest can well affect balance factors and improve the recovery balance strategy of middle-aged people. Therefore, in order to prevent disturbance in the balance and falling with increasing age, it is recommended to take advantage of water balance exercises with weighted vest in the middle-aged period.