Aquatic treadmill training reduces blood pressure reactivity to physical stress.

Purpose: Endurance exercise may reduce blood pressure and improve vasodilatory capacity, thereby blunting the hypertensive response to stress. Therefore, we sought to test the efficacy of a novel model of low-impact endurance training, the aquatic treadmill (ATM), to improve blood pressure (BP) parameters.

Methods: Sixty sedentary adults were randomized to 12-wk of either ATM (n = 36 [19 males and 17 females], 41 ± 2 yr, 173.