INTRODUCTION: The aging of the population in the western world urges for measures in order to prevent functional decline and maintain optimal social participation and quality of life in seniors. It is generally believed that graded exercise training might be effective here. However, only few studies have yet evaluated whether this assumption is actually true. OBJECTIVE: To fuse all appropriate randomized clinical trials (date of publication 1990 to 1995) and to explore the effectiveness of preventive exercise training regimen on functional abilities of healthy seniors (> 60 years). METHOD: Meta-analysis. RESULTS: A total of eight relevant RCT's were identified, which all appeared to possess poor methodological quality and which all lack a relevant rationale of theoretical propositions. CONCLUSIONS: We infer that the effectiveness of exercise training in healthy elderly is still inconclusive. Furthermore, we intermingle rationales in this paper in order to design future studies more appropriate and advise is given in order to avoid methodological flaws and pitfalls.

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