Reductions in Cardiopulmonary Disease Risk Following Calisthenic Concurrent Aerobic and Resistance Training in Young Adults in a Low Resource Setting

Background: Studies have demonstrated that young adults, especially in low to middleincome countries, are increasingly susceptible to unfavorable alterations in body composition during their transition from adolescence to adulthood. This places young adults at an increased risk for numerous chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular, and/or pulmonary diseases. Objectives: This study aimed to determine if concurrent aerobic and resistance calisthenic training could reduce cardiopulmonary disease risk in young adults in a low resource setting. Methods: Thirty young adult males were randomly assigned to either a sixweek nonexercising control group (NON) or concurrent aerobic or resistance training group (CON) that engaged in three, nonconsecutive, 60minute exercise sessions using a combination of 4-5 progressive resistance training exercises for two sets of 15-20 repetitions and 30 minutes of aerobic exercises at a rating of perceived exertion of 9-15. This study assessed anthropometry (body mass, stature, body mass index waisttohip ratio, waisttostature ratio, sum of skinfolds, percentage body fat, fat mass, fat free mass and conicity index) and lung function (forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expired volume in one second (FEV sub 1 /sub ), forced expiratory volume in one second/forced vital capacity ratio (FEV sub 1 /sub /FVC), peak expiratory flow (PEF), maximal expiratory flow at 75% (MEF75%), maximal expiratory flow at 50% (MEF50%) and maximal expiratory flow at 25 (MEF25%). Results: Concurrent training resulted in significant (P ≤ 0.05) improvements in waisttohip ratio (0.94 ± 0.04 to 0.92 ± 0.05; P = 0.042), fat free mass (57.46 ± 9.16 to 58.21 ± 8.65 kg; P = 0.018), percentage body fat (14.56 ± 5.96 to 13.24 ± 5.77%, P = 0.006), fat mass (10.22 ± 5.31 to 9.29 ± 5.17 kg; P = 0.008), sum of skinfolds (96.22 ± 35.64 to 87.67 ± 32.15 mm; P = 0.004), PEF (5.06 ± 2.04 to 6.57 ± 2.51 L; P = 0.018), MEF75% (4.78 ± 2.01 to 6.24 ± 1.99 L.sec sup 1 /sup ; P = 0.026), MEF50% (4.08 ± 1.20 to 5.24 ± 1.44 L.sec sup 1 /sup ; P = 0.043) and MEF25% (2.66 ± 0.63 to 3.31 ± 1.87 L.sec sup 1 /sup ; P = 0.038). Conclusions: The findings support the feasibility and efficacy of a simple and inexpensive concurrent aerobic and resistance training program to simultaneously improve body composition and lung function in an attempt to curb the increasing incidence of overweight/obesity and associated lung dysfunction in young adults in a low resource setting.