ABSTRACT
Background: During the pandemic COVID19 in 2020, Movement Control Order (MCO) was implemented worldwide, including in Malaysia. This MCO restricts the movement and activities of the public to limit the community involvement in physical activity such as sports, exercise, and recreational activities. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the trend of involvement of Malaysian people in sports, exercise, and recreational activities while MCO. Methods: This pilot survey was conducted among 150 randomly selected respondents from the enumerators around Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, and Putrajaya. Malaysia Sports Culture Index questionnaire (2018), with high validity and reliability used to collect the data. The data were analyzed descriptively using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 26. Results: The findings showed that exercise was carried out by 60.5%, followed by e-sports by 19.5%, physical sports by 11.7%, and active recreation by 8.3%. Aerobics, walking, yoga, Zumba, and jogging are the five most frequent exercise activities in the exercise category. For the sports category, people prefer badminton and table tennis. The choice of time to be active during MCO shows the most common time is in the evening, 43.7%. This is followed by the morning option 28.8%, night time, 25.0%, and afternoon time, only 2.5%. Social media 78.7% is the most dominant medium used by Malaysians in performing sports activities, exercise, active recreation, or e-sports. On the other hand, some respondents used video conferencing 13.5% and conventional media 32.4% as a medium for being active. Conclusion: In particular, involvement in active sports and recreational activities declined significantly during the MCO. However, the dominant percentage of exercise activity plays a vital role in reducing the health risks associated with physical inactivity.
ABSTRACT
Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) among obese people is a common joint pain with loss of physical functioning, disability and reduction in quality of life QoL). This study aimed to compare the effect of aquatic and Thera-band exercise on pain intensity and QoL among obese people with KOA. A total of 45 KOA participants with BMI ≥ 27.5 kg.m-² were randomly recruited and randomly assigned into three groups;aquatic (AQG), Thera-band exercise (TBG) and control (CG);carried out the exercise program, two times weekly, 60 minutes per session, for eight weeks. Quality of life was measured using modified KOOS questionnaire with five sub-domains;pain, symptoms, activities of daily living (ADL), sports/ recreation and knee-related QoL. The results showed no significant difference in age, weight, BMI, and KOA involvement background in all groups. The MANCOVA results displayed a significant interaction of group×time effect on all sub-domains of QoL;pain, symptoms, ADL, sports/recreation and total QoL. In addition, pairwise comparisons between groups among QoL sub-domains revealed that there was significant difference between AQG and TBG in all dimensions of QoL (pain, symptom, ADL and knee-related QoL) exception in sports/recreation domain. For overall aquatic exercise could reduce pain and improve QoL greater that Thera-band exercise after eight weeks of the exercise program. As a conclusion, this progressive aquatic exercise program had a superior effectiveness to reduce all dimensions of QoL, although Thera-band exercise cannot be ignored as an effective, simple and inexpensive method to create a self-exercise program among obese people who suffering from KOA.