Wrist Weights Not Linked to Injuries : Industry-Funded Study Reports on Aerobic Devices
The use of light wrist weights--a small but growing trend for enhancing aerobic dance-exercise workouts--may bring on the aches and muscle soreness associated with any new athletic activity, but these problems appear to be minor and transient.
That is the conclusion of an industry-funded study conducted at the Jane Fonda Workout exercise studio in conjunction with the Center for Sports Medicine-Dance Medicine at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco.
The 10-week study examined the use of only one-pound, bracelet-style wrist weights and did not include hand-held weights or leg weights.
The results of the study were presented Saturday by Dr. James G. Garrick, director of the Center for Sports Medicine-Dance Medicine, during the third-annual International Dance-Exercise Assn. convention at the Disneyland Hotel.
“We have thus far seen no evidence that the use of wrist weights results in any increase in injuries . . . ,” Garrick told hundreds of dance-exercise instructors gathered in the hotel’s Grand Ballroom.
Fonda, whose Jayne Development Inc. co-funded the study with Spenco Medical Corp. (maker of the weights used in the study), had been scheduled to appear with Garrick.
But last Wednesday the actress was asked by the union representing Disneyland Hotel employees, who are in a labor dispute with the hotel, not to cross its picket line. In a statement read by her representative, Fonda, who had appeared with Garrick at the convention last year when the results of a study on aerobic injuries were presented, said “as a matter of principle I don’t cross workers’ picket lines.”
Despite the fitness celebrity’s absence, Garrick went gamely ahead as solo speaker, joking that after Fonda had spoken last year, he had told the audience that “maybe the most difficult thing in the world is to follow Jane Fonda in a program.” This year, he said, he thought of something even more difficult: to speak instead of Jane Fonda.
Garrick, an orthopedic surgeon who has published numerous articles on sports injuries, observed that “during the first half of the 1980s, aerobic dance became the single largest, organized group fitness endeavor in the United States.”
“Hundreds of thousands of participants, the majority of them women, committed themselves--many for the first time--to an ongoing program of fitness enhancement,” he said. “Although critics have charged that the activity is both ill-conceived and dangerous, the facts remain that: First, there is now abundant, scientific evidence that such programs do indeed enhance fitness. And second, that the injury problems are no greater than those encountered in such alternative activities as tennis and running, and in all likelihood are appreciably less.”
In his investigation into the use of wrist weights in aerobic dance-exercise, Garrick explained that 95 intermediate-level students and five instructors had been monitored over a 10-week period in which they wore one-pound bracelet-style wrist weights during their regular workouts.
Among the 95 students, he said, 38% had 56 “complaints” regarding what was happening to them during aerobics, and four of the instructors each had one complaint.
In the study, he said, 10 of the complaints were considered injuries. The injury rate, according to Garrick, is nearly identical to that seen in the original study in which the weights were not used. And, he noted, “none of these people with complaints sought advice from a physician or received medical care.”
Although the most common complaints associated with aerobic dancing are shin, foot, ankle and knee problems, those types of problems decreased--although not to a statistically significant degree--in the people wearing wrist weights, said Garrick.
Complaints of back and shoulder problems, however, increased to a “statistically significant degree” in those people using wrist weights and, Garrick admitted, “We’re not sure why.”
“It may be that just the addition of one pound on the arm, which is increasing the weight on the arm on most of these people by between 15% and 25% . . . may be more burden than the muscles of your shoulder can tolerate well at first, and so the complaints of shoulder pain may be the result of this.”
As for the complaints of back pain, Garrick said it was hard for him to imagine that the one-pound wrist weights put people into positions--bending over farther, for example--than they would without the wrist weights.
“I think what may have happened,” he said, “is that with the use of wrist weights, there may be a greater tendency to hyper-extend the back when you’re doing some of the aerobics.”
Garrick stressed, however, that although there was an increase in complaints regarding the back and shoulder, there was no increase in injuries: problems that actually caused any disability regarding the back and shoulders.
Examine Pulse Rates
The second part of the study involved examining the pulse rates of 20 students wearing the wrist weights.
Contrary to what might be expected, he said, “the bottom line on the pulse rate is that there is no statistically significant increase in pulse rates with the addition of the wrist weights.”
Garrick said it appears that the majority of the study participants have an aerobic “thermostat” that they set for a certain pulse rate and which, once set, remains constant by changing the relative activity levels of different parts of the body: “If they add more stress to the upper extremities (the arms), then the lower extremities (the legs) back down a little bit,” he explained.
In conclusion, Garrick suggested that wrist weights can serve two specific purposes:
- For the person with lower extremity injuries or problems (knee, leg, ankle or foot), wrist weights allow a greater portion of the exertion to be borne by the arms, thus enabling the legs to rest.
- For those individuals who are “maxed out on the class they’re in”--who are too fit for their current class level and aren’t showing any more improvement--the use of wrist weights can enhance the workout level.
Garrick said that the findings of the wrist-weight study, along with the 29,000 hours of activities the center followed in its original study on aerobic injuries, would still suggest “that the hazards associated with aerobic dance are minimal and overshadowed by the potential fitness-enhancing benefits enjoyed by the participants in this activity.”
Will Compare Rates
Garrick noted that part of the next 10-week research project will be to compare hand-held weights to the use of passive wrist weights. It also will include increasing the weights from one to three pounds.
“I would say there certainly isn’t any evidence that suggests that hand-held weights are inherently bad, but I think if you’re going to use them, I would use them with a little bit of caution, particularly if they weigh more than one pound,” he said.
In an interview after his presentation, Garrick was asked if he felt his findings on the use of wrist weights were significant.
“I think so little research has been done in aerobic dance as far as injuries are concerned that all these things kind of fill in little chunks, and you’ve got to pick away at it. I mean, there aren’t going to be any breathtaking studies,” he said.
Garrick noted that he is “distressed by the fact that people keep saying out of hand, such and such is dangerous or that aerobic dance is a horrible thing for women to be involved in. . . . Everything we’ve done thus far would suggest that’s not the case.”
Aerobic dance-exercise is believed to be the fastest-growing fitness activity in the United States. The annual sports census, sponsored by Sporting Goods Dealer Magazine, reports that there were more than 24 million aerobic dance enthusiasts in 1985, an increase of more than 50% since 1981.
In Garrick’s view, aerobic dance-exercise provides a physical fitness outlet that many women would not otherwise seek.
In his center’s first study on aerobic dance, Garrick said, “42% of the women did nothing else in the name of fitness. They didn’t play tennis, they didn’t play racquetball, they didn’t walk, they didn’t swim. Aerobic dance was it, and it was probably it since high school.”
And, he said, “you would think these people would be a very high-risk group--they’re 35, 40 years old, they haven’t done anything (of an athletic nature), they’re being put into a high-energy sort of thing and you would think intuitively, they’re going to get hurt. Well, they don’t get hurt very often. If you took that same group of women and put them into unsupervised running programs or tennis programs, there’s no question in my mind you’d see a higher frequency of injuries.
Advice Is Handy
“The beautiful thing about aerobic dance to me--and I’m not an apologist for them, I’m an orthopedic surgeon and I do this (the research) because I enjoy doing it--is not only has it kind of captured the imagination of a group of people that nothing else has captured yet, but there’s somebody there to ask for advice.
“If you decided you’re going to go run, what the hell do you do if your Achilles tendon starts hurting the third day? I mean, there isn’t an instructor there with you every day.”
For those critics who counter that the instructors haven’t been trained in exercise physiology and that they’re not doctors, Garrick replies that the aerobic dance instructors “have been through all this and their advice is, in our experience, pretty good.
“So if you come to class and say, ‘Gee, my heel hurts,’ the likelihood is quite high that they’re going to be able to say, ‘Well, why don’t you do this a little bit different or use some ice on it tonight?’ And they’re going to give you good advice. And in most activities, there is no one to give you that advice.”
