Smart exercise planning could boost recovery for people with cancer

The periodization 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, periodized exercise programs 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 program is an effective therapeutic strategy for cancer management and serves as supportive care alongside conventional treatments.

“In addition, appropriately targeted exercise programs 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.

Periodization is the structuring of training into cycles defined by their duration and aligned with specific targeted outcomes across the cancer continuum (e.g. neo-adjuvant, 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 periodization, 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, periodization can be employed to foster physical, psychological and physiological benefits induced by exercise to improve wellbeing,” 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.