Effectiveness of a Conditioning Program on Amateur Female Marathon Runners.

ABSTRACT

There is a sudden rise in the participation of middle-aged women in marathons across India without proper knowledge about how to prepare for these marathons. This leads to rise in injuries in them like low back pain, knee pain, stress fractures, urinary incontinence etc., some of which can easily be avoided. There is a need to find out a suitable conditioning program for these participants that will target problems affecting this age group and gender specifically. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of conditioning program on post run physical functioning in female amateur marathon runners. Pain Assessment, DOMS, Modified Borg Scale were used for assessing the individuals. METHODSIn this comparative study, 52 amateur female marathon runners, were randomly allocated into two groups with 26 runners in each group. We evaluated pain and exertion using pain assessment and Borg Scale. Occurrence of incontinence was assessed by asking a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) was assessed using pain pressure threshold (PPT) 24 hrs. post run. RESULTSThere was a significant effect of the conditioning program on these female runners compared to administration of no conditioning at all. There was a reduction of pain in all the components of the pain scale (p= <0.001). Exertion of the trained runners was also less (p= <0.001) as well as in the occurrence of incontinence (p= <0.0430). PPT was also substantially increased in them (p= <0.001). CONCLUSIONSThe conditioning program administered to amateur female marathon runners was effective in reducing their risk of injuries and problems related to women’s health that occur while running a marathon.