COMPARISON OF FUNCTIONAL TRAINING VS TRADITIONAL TRAINING ON ADL'S IN THE OLDER ADULT: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Age related loss of muscle strength can impact the older adult’s ability to perform activities of daily living (ADL). Both traditional and functional strength training has shown to improve overall strength in the elderly. The purpose of this systematic review is to investigate whether traditional or functional training has a greater impact on improving ADL performance in older, community dwelling adults. Databases were utilized for article searching. Key search words included: functional training, traditional training, older adults, and ADLs. Results were screened by title, abstract, and full text, respectively. Inclusion criteria consisted of: written in English, publication 2010-2020, participants’ community-dwelling ≥ 65 years old. Studies focusing on participants with medical conditions were excluded. Five articles remained after screening. 722 participants were included in the five studies. One of five studies showed no significant difference in ADL performance between traditional and functional training. Three of five studies indicated a significant difference in favor of functional over traditional training in a least one ADL outcome measure. One study showed significant within group improvements for both traditional and functional training but did not indicate between group differences. The findings indicate while both functional and traditional training improves ADL’s, functional training showed more significant gains.