EFFECT OF ASANAS AND PILATES ON BODY COMPOSITION OF YOUNG SEDENTARY WOMEN

Ms. Najnin Pathan and Dr. Ajay Kumar

 Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if Yoga Asanas and Pilates exercise could reduce Weight, BMI, body fat %, LBM and visceral fat % of young sedentary women. 54 female students in age group 18 to 24 years from Devi Ahilya University were randomly selected and served as the subjects. The selected subjects were divided into three equal groups, two experimental groups (Asanas group & Pilates exercise group) and one control group. Each group consisting of 18 subjects each. Three days per week exercise programme was followed for both the experimental group i.e. Asanas group and Pilates Exercise group. For 8 weeks, whereas control group was not given any exercise program and were performed their regular routine. The Asanas and Pilates exercise were being selected on the basis of their benefit for the Abdominal, Hips and Thigh areas. The duration of every week workout was initially 20 to finally 45 minutes. Weight, BMI, body fat %, LBM and visceral fat % measured by using Tanita body composition analyzer before and after the training program for both experimental and control groups. To find out the significance of the difference between the pre and post test data of each group paired‘t’ test was applied and to find out between group significance of the difference analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was applied. Whenever the F ratio for adjusted post test mean was found significant, the Tukey HSD test was applied to determine the paired adjusted final mean differences. For all analysis, the level of significant was fixed at 0.05. The result of this study shows that the Asanas training programme was found to be effective in reducing Body Fat % whereas the Pilates training programme were found to be effective in reducing in Weight, BMI, Body fat %, Visceral Fat %, of the subjects. 

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