PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of upper body muscle strength training on anthropometric measurements and cardiopulmonary function in healthy obese women. SUBJECTS: Sixty-three obese women (age 37.96 +/- 2.25 years, height 158.99 +/- 5.76 cm, body weight 83.65 +/- 11.24 kg, body mass index 33.11 +/- 4.31 kg/m2) volunteered to participate in this study. METHODS: The participants were divided into 3 groups. The aerobic (A) group performed diet plus aerobic exercise on a bicycle ergometer for 45 to 60 min, 3 times a week for 8 weeks, while the aerobic-strength (AS) group performed strength training with the barbell and their body weight plus diet and aerobic exercise. C group was the control. The spirometer test, gas analysis and anthropometric measurements were performed for all three groups before and after training. SPSS 11.0 statistical software was used to perform all the analysis. Comparisons were made using one-way ANOVA. RESULTS: The present findings show that, there were significant differences between pre- and post-training measures of anthropometric parameters and cardiopulmonary function in the study groups. After 8 wk of training, forced vital capacity (FVC) and maximum voluntary ventilation (MVV) of the AS group showed a significant increase (16.19% and 13.77%). Furthermore, V02max parameters of the A and AS groups showed a significant increase (8.48 to 6.15%). CONCLUSIONS: Diet and aerobic training in obese women significantly improved their morphological structure and aerobic capacity. However, diet plus aerobic and strength training significantly increased muscle strength of the upper body and accessory respiratory muscles. Therefore pulmonary functions parameters such as FVC and MVV values increased.

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