Analysis of activities in the daily lives of older adults exposed to the Pilates Method.

Objective: The objective of this study was to analyse the Pilates Method (PM) to assess whether it can help to improve the performance of activities that older adults undertake in their daily lives.

Method: this is a pre-post experimental study with a convenience sample consisting of 22 women, aged from 65 to 74 years. Data collection was divided into three stages: 1) the Battery Test of Daily Life Activities for Physically Independent Elderly (BTDLAPIE); 2) 12 weeks of Pilates training, with 50-minute sessions twice a week; 3) Repetition of all BTDLAPIE tests. We used the Student t test for paired samples and the level of significance was considered to be ≤0.05.

Conclusion: After the study group had been exposed to 12 weeks of training with the PM, it took them less time to perform the activities of their daily lives. However, we suggest that other controlled studies are needed in order to understand these outcomes more fully.