The periodisation of exercise training could give people undergoing cancer treatment and those in recovery a tailored pathway to support strength and resilience during the challenging journey of cancer care and rehabilitation.

By strategically varying exercise mode, intensity, and volume over time, periodised exercise programmes could help improve the physical function, reduce treatment-related fatigue and enhance overall quality of life for cancer patients, ECU PhD candidate Francesco Bettariga said.

“It is increasingly acknowledged that a structured exercise programme is an effective therapeutic strategy for cancer management and serves as supportive care alongside conventional treatments.

“In addition, appropriately targeted exercise programmes not only enhance muscle strength and cardiorespiratory fitness but also improve cancer treatment-related symptoms such as fatigue, anxiety, depression, and pain, leading to enhanced quality of life,” Mr Bettariga said.

Periodisation is the structuring of training into cycles defined by their duration and aligned with specific targeted outcomes across the cancer continuum (e.g. neoadjuvant, adjuvant, survivorship).

This structuring could take several factors into account, such as cancer treatments (e.g. chemotherapy cycles), holidays or seasonal variations, and allows people to introduce a variation in the type, intensity, and volume of exercise being done.

“For people undergoing cancer therapies like chemotherapy, it is often difficult to determine the level of fatigue or illness on any given day. By using periodisation, these patients can base their exercise around their symptoms,” Mr Bettariga said.

“On good days they can train at a higher intensity or volume, and on bad days they can manipulate the exercise to accommodate for their symptoms, and prevent physical deconditioning associated with cancer treatments.

In addition, “for those after cancer treatments, periodisation can be employed to foster physical, psychological and physiological benefits induced by exercise to improve well-being,” Mr Bettariga stated.

“In this way, we can balance the exercise dosage over time, allowing the patient to maximise the benefits, which in this case would be to preserve or improve physical fitness and quality of life.”

Research has shown that exercise plays a vital role in cancer care, offering benefits that go beyond physical fitness.

It can improve body composition by increasing lean muscle mass and reducing fat, while also positively influencing systemic inflammation, metabolism and immune function, which could impact cancer progression and recurrence.

Exercise has also been shown to help patients better tolerate cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation therapy by reducing side effects and treatment-related toxicity.

Article: Periodizing Exercise Medicine Prescription for Patients with Cancer: A Narrative Opinion

Source: Edith Cowan University