Effects of Recreational Football on Bone Mineral Density and Isokinetic Muscle Strength in Elderly Men: A Study of Turkish Older Men.

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• To maintain bone and muscle health, it is important to stay active and include weight bearing exercise.

• Playing recreational football twice a week for 14 weeks offers a social and engaging exercise that benefits muscle and bone strength in older men.

• Findings from this study should be interpreted with caution and larger studies are warranted to confirm observed benefits.

Introduction -

Ageing is associated with losses in bone and muscle, which can negatively impact independence and quality of life. Regular resistance exercise has been shown to improve muscle strength,and bone density, reducing the risk of frailty indicating its role in healthy ageing. Although recreational football is often thought of as cardiovascular exercise, sprints, and sudden changes in direction against the body weight acts as a functional form of resistance exercise that stimulates muscular hypertrophy and strength. This study aimed to investigate the effects of recreational football on body composition, knee isokinetic muscle strength, and angular velocity in healthy elderly Turkish men.

Methods -

• This was a 14-week randomised control trial of 66 healthy elderly (65-75 years) men.

• Participants were randomly assigned to control group (CG) or football group (FG), which comprised of two x 60min football sessions per week. It is unclear from the protocol if these were supervised or not. Each session comprised a 10 minute warm-up routine focused on balance, flexibility, and coordination with 3 x 15 minute games and rest periods totalling 5 minutes.

• Pre and post-treatment body composition and bone mineral density (BMD) were measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA).

• Isokinetic muscle strength was measured at the dominant foot knee joint at angular velocities of 60°/s and 120°/s.

• Knee joint flexion and extension angular velocities were also determined at 60°/s and 120°/s.

Results -

• Football training was associated with a statistically significant group-by-time interaction for bone mineral density (BMD; F = 7.009, p = 0.009, partial η² = 0.060), indicating a moderate effect size and differing patterns of BMD change between the football and control groups.

• Post-hoc analysis highlighted a significant increase in BMD in the FG group (p=0.021), and post intervention differences between FG and CG (p=0.031), with no changes observed for control pre-post (p>0.05). However, mean data pre and post intervention was not provided by authors.

• Muscle strength measured through peak power flexion (p=0.001) and total work flexion (p=0.039) at 120°/s differed significantly between the football and control group, with improvements observed in the football group.

Conclusion

• It was concluded that recreational football benefits bone mineral density and lower extremity muscle strength. However, findings should be interpreted with caution.

• Practitioners could consider recreational football an alternative strategy to support bone and musculoskeletal muscle health in older men.

• Two 60-minute sessions per week for 14 weeks could be enough to ensure adequate physical functioning and may have physical benefits which may be useful in supporting older men to remain more active and potentially offset some of the clinical signs of frailty

• These results were only in men and may not be generalisable into women.

• Future research should consider whether increased recreational group activities such as football  translates into reduced falls, and fracture risk.

• Compare recreational football to other resistance exercises to see whether the cardiovascular aspect provides additional benefits.

• The findings in this study are limited by the lack of nutrition control and analysis. Future studies should consider controlling dietary intakes of macronutrients or at the very least recording dietary intakes to understand their involvement in the outcomes of studies such as this one.