Improvement in cardiac dysfunction with a novel circuit training method combining simultaneous aerobic-resistance exercises. A randomized trial

Fig 1. Study participant’s flow chart.

Fig 2. Continuous aerobic group and super-circuit group–training protocols. Notes: The figure illustrates the training modalities (i.e., treadmill, bike, hand cycle and resistance training) used in each training group. Each training modality is denoted in a different color. The numbers that appear inside the boxes denote the number of minutes engaged in the designated training modality; in the super-circuit group, in weeks 1–2, 3–6 and 7–12, the rest interval was of two minutes, one and a half minute and one minute, respectively.

Fig 3. Within and between-groups differences in echocardiography. Notes: * significant within-group changes from pre to post-test (dependent t-test,level of significance was set at 0.05 and adjusted to 0.016, using the Bonferroni correction). No between group differences were observed (intendent t-test). ES also revealed differences between the two training modalities effectiveness. More specifically, only the SCT group presented moderate-to-large ESs (Cohen's d ≥ 0.51) in echocardiography measures, whereas the CAT group presented only trivial ESs in two out of the three echocardiography measures (i.e., E/A and EF) (see Table 2).