Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

The aim of this study was to develop a twelve-week chair exercise program and to study the feasibility and efficacy of this exercise program on SFT in elderly. The subjects were fifteen elderly (eight females, seven males) aged seventy years and above. They participated in ‘fall prevention exercise class’ from K community center. The fifty-minute combined the chair exercise program included: full body stretching (15min); lower body (hip adductors, quadriceps/femoris, hamstrings, psoas muscles) resistance exercise (25min); walking variation (5min); and cool-down exercise (5min) was performed 1 time per week for 12 weeks. Evaluation of the chair exercise program was conducted Pre-Post Test of three factors of SFT (lower strength, lower flexibility, agility/dynamic balance). The test data were analyzed by paired t-test of SPSS/PC ver. 21.0. Results include: lower strength had significant differences between pre and post test (t = - 5.1235, n = 14, p=.001); lower flexibility had significant differences between pre and post training (t = - 2.3659, n = 14, p=.033); dynamic agility, had significant differences between pre and post training (t = 3.1500, n = 14, p=.007). The chair exercise program has a positive effect on improving muscle strength and flexibility and dynamic agility of lower limbs. This program has shown a high improvement in terms of the effect size calculation.