Effects of 16 weeks of aerobic, resistance and combination exercise programmes on smoking

Abstract

Previous research on the cessation of smoking and the prevention of smoking recidivism using exercise training has mainly focused on aerobic training (AER). Thus, the aim of the study was to investigate the effect of 16 weeks of AER, dynamic resistance training (DRT) and a combination of the two modalities in the form combination training (COMB) on smoking cessation. A quantitative, experimental, comparative, research design making use of a pre-test, treatment period and post-test was used. Subjects were divided into one control group (CG) and three experimental groups: AER, DRT and COMB. Dependent t-tests revealed that the CG and DRT non-significantly decreased their daily cigarette smoking by a mean 0.07% and 0.04%, respectively (an effective reduction of 0.462 and 0.083 cigarettes smoked daily) (p = 0.133 and 0.831, respectively; p ≤ 0.05). In turn, the AER significantly decreased their mean daily cigarette usage by 1.917 cigarettes (17.42%) (p = 0.024) as did the COMB who too significantly decreased their mean daily cigarette usage by 3.231 cigarettes (23.77%) (p = 0.045) over the same period. Thus, only AER and COMB was shown to be effective at reducing the number of cigarettes smoked daily in sedentary male average smokers.

Key words: Aerobic training (AER), combination training (COMB), exercise, resistance, training (DRT), smoking cessation, weight training.

AJPHERD Vol.11(1) 2005: 50-58