The Journal of

Introduction: Metabolic syndrome is considered as a risk factor for many chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. The syndrome is caused by such factors as poor nutrition, sedentary lifestyle, and genetic predisposition, while higher muscle strength levels are associated with a lower metabolic syndrome. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate the response of some cardiovascular risk factors in females with metabolic syndrome after 10 weeks of resistance training (RT).

Methods: In this study, 26 postmenopausal sedentary women without any diseases participated, who were selected via voluntary purposive sampling and randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. The subjects participated in anthropometric tests, including height, waist and hip ratios, weight, subcutaneous fat and blood sampling. The experimental group performed the RT for 3sessions in 10weeks with 40 to 50 percent of maximum repetition.

Results: The study results suggested that after 10 weeks of RT in the experimental group, weight (p<0.001), total cholesterol (p<0.03) and triglyceride (p<0.001) indices were significantly decreased in comparison with those of the control group. BMI, waist ratio, fat percentage, systolic blood pressure and HDL significantly changed between pre and post-test of the experimental group, though these changes were not reported to be significant between the experimental and control groups.

Conclusion: The findings of the present study revealed that a regular resistance training program could improve the cardiovascular risk factor in females with metabolic syndrome. However, the effective mechanisms in improving metabolic syndrome symptoms subsequent to exercise are not clearly recognized yet.