Acute exercise may result in post-exercise hypotension (PEH), which has been observed both for normotensive and hypertensive individuals, especially after continuous exercise (low to moderate intensity). The purposes were to compare the hypotensive effects of continuous exercise performed with alternated (AI) and constant intensities (CI) and verify if AI is more effective on inducing PEH. Eleven hypertensive subjects (56.8 ± 2.6 years; BMI of 26.5 ± 0.3 kg/m²) performed, on different days, an incremental test (IT) and two submaximal exercise sessions (45 min) on treadmill (AI and CI). The AI consisted of 2 min at 55.9 ± 2.6% and 1 min at 74.5 ± 4.0% of heart rate reserve (HRR) while the CI consisted of 45 min at 60 ± 2.5% of HRR. On both sessions participants rested for 10 min before exercise for blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) measurements and then performed a 5 min warm-up followed by 45 min of either AI or CI. BP and HR were monitored at each 5 min of exercise and at the 5th, 10th, 15th, 30th, 60th, 90th and 120th min of post-exercise recovery (rec). ANOVA and Student t-test evidenced PEH of systolic blood pressure (SBP) after both sessions when compared to resting (p < 0.001) at all moments of rec with no differences between AI and CI. PEH of diastolic blood pressure (DBP) was observed at the 5th, 10th, 15th and 30th min of rec after CI (p < 0.05), but not after AI. PEH of mean blood pressure (MBP) was observed after CI and AI at all moments of rec. In spite of the similar PEH for SBP, the CI resulted in PEH of DBP, with longer reduction of MBP. No differences were observed between treatments for the absolute values of BP during the rec period. The authors conclude that the exercise intensities applied during AI did not induce additional hypotensive effects in relation to CI during the rec.
Post-exercise hypotension; Hypertension; Treadmill; Intensity variation
