Components of an exercise session for cancer patients

Warm-up phase

Warm-up facilitates the transition from rest to exercise and may reduce the possible musculoskeletal injury by improving joint range of motion.

All exercise sessions should start with a low-intensity exercise during 5 or 10 minutes, incorporating light stretching exercises. Then, we could do the specific warming.

For example, patients who walk or jog might conduct a warm-up phase gradually increasing from a slow walk before initiating the training program.

Specific phase

Aerobic exercises:

Aerobic training includes 30-60 minutes of continuous or intermittent (minimum of 10-minute bouts

accumulated during the day) of aerobic activity training at 50-90% HRmax or 40-85% HRR.

Anabolic resistance exercises include performing 1-4 sets per muscle group training at 50-80% of 1RM or 6-10RM. The session should include 6-9 different exercises, with 60-90 seconds recovery between sets.

Anabolic exercises should generally follow these rules in terms of ordering:

• Large muscle groups first (for example, legs)

• Multi-joint exercises (for example, bench press) before single joint (elbow extension)

• Abdominal and lower back exercises after whole-body ground-based exercises such as

squat, dead-lift, bench press etc. This is to avoid fatiguing the muscle groups that stabilise and support the trunk.

Flexibility exercises:

It include performing 2-4 sets per muscle group at 15-30 seconds stretching time.

Cool-down

This phase provides a gradual recovery from the specific activity performed and includes exercises of lower intensities. The cool-down allows to bring the values of heart rate and the blood pressure at rest.

For example, we can use slow walking when completing higher intensity aerobic activity or light stretching when completing a resistance training session.