Ergometric performance during exercise training in men with intermittent claudication

Objective: To determine and describe changes in weekly work, power, exercise times, and recovery times during an exercise training intervention in men with peripheral arterial disease (PAD) and intermittent calf claudication.

Design: Tracking of weekly exercise training parameters involved repeated measures over time in one group of participants. Other outcomes of this pilot study used a one-group, pretest-posttest design.

Setting: Tertiary-care medical center.

Participants: Fifteen male veterans (mean age, 69 years) with Fontaine stage IIa PAD and classic intermittent calf claudication.

Main outcome measurements: Participants completed graded treadmill exercise tests before and after intervention from which maximal walking power was calculated. Work, power, and exercise and recovery times for each exercise training session were computed and averaged for each week.

Intervention: The intervention consisted of an intensive 3-month exercise training program involving walking and calf muscle exercises: 3 sessions per week at the clinic (treadmill walking and calf ergometry) and 2 sessions per week at home (free walking and standing heel raises).

Results: After training, participants increased treadmill maximal walking power from 220 to 414 W (by 87%). Treadmill and calf exercise work, power, and exercise time per session increased linearly during 13 weeks of training, whereas recovery time per session of treadmill exercise decreased. During the same period, treadmill and calf exercise training power outputs increased by averages of 227% and 92%, respectively.

Conclusion: Calculation of work and power during exercise training can be used to track progress quantitatively at short intervals. Weekly linear increases in training work and power per exercise session suggest that optimal intervention duration may be longer than 3 months for men with PAD and intermittent calf claudication.