Load monitoring on Pilates training: a study protocol for a randomized clinical trial

Abstract Background: Currently there are campaigns to raise the awareness of the need to practice some physical exercise with several objectives, mainly as a preventive character. From this perspective, we can see the use of the Pilates method as an instrument of therapeutic exercise for the protection and promotion of health. However, despite being popularly performed, there is still no scientific evidence on the standardization of the use of the method and its progression to an adequate prescription of physical training. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to develop a protocol to monitor the progression of Pilates loads daily between the basic, intermediate and advanced levels, as well as to analyze the effect of the method on the psychometric, cardiorespiratory and autonomic parameters. Methods: there will be a total of 36 sessions of Pilates mat for 32 healthy men. In each training session, initially, cardiorespiratory parameters, pain through the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), and a psychometric questionnaire will be collected for the volunteers. Heart rate (HR), subjective perception of effort (SPE), and RR intervals will be measured during the sessions for subsequent use to analyze the progression of the loads by monitoring the internal training load and heart rate variability (HRV), respectively. At the end of the sessions, cardiorespiratory parameters, the VAS, the psychometric questionnaire will be measured again and the participants will only be released after 15 minutes of rest for the final HR analysis and to re-respond to the PSE scale. Before and after the 36 sessions of training, participants will also be evaluated in relation to psychometric, cardiorespiratory, and autonomic parameters. Discussion: this study deserves to be highlighted as it is a parallel randomized clinical trial with standardization of training, with the purpose of monitoring the prescription of loads of the method, as well as verifying its efficacy in clinical, cardiorespiratory, and autonomic outcomes. The easy reproducibility of the protocol from its description, also improves the study, besides providing support for prescribing the method to the professionals involved.