Mohsen Assarzadeh, Mohsen Akbarpour Beni and Mehdi khoubi
The aim of this study was to investigate and compare the effect of four types of sub-maximal aerobic exercises (front crawl swimming, running, bicycle riding and rhythmic movements) on the variations of systolic and diastolic blood pressure during and after the exercise in middle-aged males with hypertension. The present article was a semiexperimental study. The statistical population used in this study included 1500 middle-aged male patients (40 to 55 years old) with drug-dependent mild hypertension, from among whom 16 patients were randomly selected as the participants of the study. The participants used medications under the supervision of a physician and they did not have any cardiac or diabetic diseases. All four types of single-session sub-maximal aerobic exercises were carried out with 60-70% of their maximal heart rate for about 20 min. The time interval between each exercise was 2 days. Investigation of the obtained results demonstrated that all the four types of selected exercises caused considerable variations in systolic and diastolic blood pressure during and after exercises. Systolic blood pressure during and after bicycle riding had the least variation relative to other exercises while systolic blood pressure during and after the rhythmic movements had the largest variation relative to other exercises. Variations of systolic blood pressure during and after running and front crawl were in an average range compared with other exercises. In all four types of exercises conducted in the present study, there was a significant decrease in the diastolic blood pressure during the exercise and this pressure drop was almost the same among all the exercises. Diastolic pressure drop after stopping exercises in the running exercise and rhythmic movements was lower and higher than other exercises, respectively.
