Personal Training vs. Group-based Exercise Prescription Compliance In Breast Cancer Survivors

PURPOSE: Exercise interventions can improve fitness and quality of life among breast cancer survivors. The magnitude of these effects may be dependent on compliance to the intended exercise prescription (ExRx), but few studies in cancer survivors have reported this information. This study examined breast cancer survivors’ ExRx compliance during a personal training (PT) or group-based exercise (GBE) intervention. METHODS: Women (N=26) with stage I-II breast cancer who had completed chemotherapy and/or radiation treatment within the previous year were randomly assigned to PT or GBE for 8 weeks. All participants received supervised exercise twice per week for 60 minutes a session. Participants were compliant to aerobic ExRx if they completed 20-30 minutes at 50-80% of heart rate reserve. Participants were compliant to upper and lower body resistance ExRx if they completed 2-3 sets of 8 repetitions within 50-80% of 1RM for chest and leg press. Compliance to aerobic, upper, and lower resistance ExRx was coded dichotomously (yes/no) for each session, then summed and divided by the number of sessions attended to calculate percent compliance. Independent t-tests examined differences in ExRx compliance between PT and GBE. Results are reported as mean±SD. RESULTS: Participants were aged 52±8.5 years, and 13.4±5.1 months post diagnosis. Of the N=24 who completed the intervention, exercise session attendance was 15.8±0.5 (99%) in PT, and 13.4±1.0 (82%) in GBE out of 16 possible sessions (p=.000). Compliance for aerobic ExRx was 77.2±0.17% in PT, and 70.1±0.17% in GBE (p=.41). Compliance for upper body resistance ExRx was 76.0±0.37% in PT and 82.4±0.20% in GBE (p=.597). Compliance for lower body resistance exercise was 80.2±0.23% in PT and 87.9±0.21% in GBE (p=.40). CONCLUSION: Exercise session attendance was higher in PT. Overall ExRx compliance was >70% for aerobic, >80% for resistance, and similar in PT and GBE. With growing support for establishing exercise programs for cancer survivors, it is important to determine sustainable and scalable delivery modalities. GBE may be more resource conscientious than PT, and this study suggests GBE can achieve comparable ExRx compliance to PT. Future exercise intervention studies in breast cancer survivors should examine how ExRx compliance affects health and/or fitness outcomes.