Modulations of 8-Week Aerobic Dance Exercise on Selected Anthropometric Indicators in Overweight and Obese Females

摘要

One of the major problems of a quiescent or sedentary lifestyle is Obesity. Such lifestyle encourages and poses increased threat to the development of myriads of disabling medical conditions like muscle weakness, postural deficiencies, diabetes, compromised aerobic capacities, hypertension and coronary heart diseases. The goal of this study was to investigate in overweight and obese women, the effect of an 8-week aerobic dance exercise on selected anthropometric indicators including weight, waist circumference (WC), hip circumference (HC), Waist-Hip ratio (WHR) and body mass index (BMI). To approach this, a total of 61 participants (32 experimental and 39 control groups) with age ranging between 18 and 30 years were ethically recruited for the exercise. While experimental group underwent 8 weeks (4 times/week) of supervised aerobic dance session, control group never partook in any structured physical activity. Aerobic capacities [VO_2max and HR] and body composition [Weight, WC, HC, WHR, percentage of body fat (BF) and muscle mass (MM)] of participants were measured at pre, mid and post interventions. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) returned a significant decrease ( p < .05 ) for Weight, BF, WC, HC, WHR and BMI. A significant increase ( p < .05 ) was however observed for MM in experimental group, proving to be insignificant in aerobic capacity and body composition indices of control group.