Long-term participation in community-based group resistance exercises delays the transition from robustness to frailty in older adults: a retrospective cohort study

How community-based group resistance exercises affect the transition from robustness to frailty remains unclear. Thus, we conducted a retrospective cohort study to determine whether the trajectory from robustness to frailty over age differed depending on the duration of participation in group exercises. We analyzed the Kihon Checklist (KCL) score of community-dwelling elderly residents of Sumoto city, Hyogo prefecture, who participated in community-based group resistance exercises between April 2010 and December 2019. Finally, 2567 older individuals were analyzed using multilevel modeling. The explanatory variables of interest were the frailty score measured using the KCL for each individual, where 0-3, 4-7, and ≥8 points denoted robustness, pre-frailty, and frailty, respectively. We considered age, sex, systolic blood pressure, pulse, duration of participation, and change in KCL score from baseline as possible confounders. Participants were classified as follows based on the duration of participation in the exercises: