BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The purpose was to explore the impact of balance and mobility training (BMT), balance and mobility plus cognitive training (BMT+C) and no training on the timed up and go (TUG), TUG cognitive (TUGcog), and TUG manual (TUGman) in older adults. A preliminary experiment examined the stability of these TUG measures over a 5-week period in older adults. METHODS: Fifteen participants in the BMT group (70.2 +/- 3.2 years) and 14 participants in the BMT+C group (68.7 +/- 5.5 years) trained one-on-one, 3x/week for 12 weeks on a balance obstacle course. The BMT group and the BMT+C group completed two or three tasks simultaneously, respectively. Fifteen participants in the control group received no training (66.7 +/- 4.2 years). The TUG, TUGcog, and TUGman were measured in seconds at baseline, after the 12-week training, and after the 12-week follow-up. During the preliminary experiment, ten participants (67.0 +/- 6.9 years) completed the three TUG measures 1/week for 5 weeks. RESULTS: Both the BMT and BMT+C groups, but not the control group, exhibited significantly faster TUG, TUGcog, and TUGman after the intervention and maintained these improvements at the 12-week follow-up. No differences between the BMT and BMT+C groups emerged. The preliminary experiment showed that the three TUG measures were stable across five testing sessions. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Both training groups improved functional mobility after the interventions and sustained these improvements over 12 weeks. This is likely not a function of repeating the TUG, TUGcog, and TUGman tests since no repeated exposure effect was shown.

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