Iranian Journal of Rehabilitation Research in Nursing

Introduction: Women who enter menopause are at risk for heart disease, blood pressure changes and overweight. Regular exercise can decrease the prevalence of these disorders in this age group. Combination of strength and endurance exercises (combined training) has been recommended as an effective treatment to improve physical functioning and cardiovascular fitness in elderly. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of two alternating order combination exercises (strength and endurance) on catecholamine, Blood pressure and Body composition in overweight postmenopausal Women. Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, 28 healthy overweight postmenopausal women in Shahrekord city in 1392 were purposefully selected and randomly allocated into three groups, strength – endurance, endurance - strength and control. Training program was conducted eight weeks, three times per week for two intervention groups. In this study, weight, height and BMI were measured with the meter and standard medical scale (SECA), and body fat percentage was assessed by Harpenden Caliper, and Sphygmomanometer was used for measuring systolic and diastolic blood pressure, also DiaPlus Kit was used to measure the concentration of epinephrine and norepinephrine. Within-group differences were analyzed by paired samples t-test and the between-group differences were analyzed by one-way ANOVA using SPSS version 16. Results: The results showed reductions in weight, BMI and body fat percentage following trainings in two exercise groups (p>0.05).although Systolic and diastolic blood pressure, waist to hip ratio and blood levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine did not showed any significant changes after intervention (p≤0.05). Conclusion: Independent of sequence of the exercises the current training program caused positive changes in body composition and physical fitness and it seems to has beneficial effects on health of overweight postmenopausal women