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[DESCRIPTION]
<p>Water-aerobics has been purposed as an attractive alternative to land-based exercise for achieving improved health and fitness in populations with orthopaedic or musculoskeletal limitations, excess adiposity or other medical recommendations. This is reflected in the growing interest of scientific community on this matter, increasing the publications in the last few years. Despite this increase of interest by participants and sports community, it seems not clear what might be the benefits that water-aerobics lessons provide to adult population. Some studies evidenced improvements in physical fitness, aerobic capacity, strength, flexibility, but some pointed the opposite conclusions (Barbosa et al., 2009; Benelli et al., 2004). In this sense, it is understood that there is no uniformity and clarity of results maybe because of the testing and procedures used, because there is likely to exist some differences between those evidences reported by studies and real practice. So, regarding the effects of aquatic exercitation in health status and physical fitness, the main gaps that could be highlighted in scientific research are the lack of longitudinal studies on several other health variables (i.e. blood pressure, triglycerides, cholesterol) in usual practitioners and the gap between the laboratorial context and the real-venue context (Bergamin et al., 2012; Delevatti et al., 2015; Volaklis et al., 2007).</p>
<p>The main purpose of the present study is to verify the effects of a 12-week water aerobics program on health indicators (lipid profile and blood pressure) and physical fitness (strength, cardiorespiratory fitness, and body composition) in adults and older adults. This project would allow to develop a master thesis and the results should also be published in a scientific journal to knowledge the scientific community and water-related professionals.</p>

[BEFORE_START]
<p>To analyze the adaptations to water-aerobics lessons, we intend to examine more than twenty subjects divided by experimental and control groups. The experimental group will comprise those ones that participate in water aerobics classes at the same sports academy. The inclusion criteria to be part of the experimental group are i) to be water aerobics practitioner; ii) to participate in at least two lessons per week regularly; iii) to be aged more than 18 years old. Furthermore, sample size calculation for an unmatched case-control study was determined using OpenEpi (OpenEpi, Version 3, open source calculator—SSPropor) and a minimal of 10 subjects and 6 subjects should be allocated to experimental and control group, respectively, to obtain a power of 0.8 at a two-sided level of 0.05. The control group will include subjects older than 18 years that do not exercise regularly. These will not participate in the water aerobics classes and should maintain their basic daily activities without physical exercise. These will be recruited from the same residential zone of sports academy. Subjects with recent hospitalization, severe cognitive or motor impairments, an inability to exercise and any other medical contraindications for physical exercise will not be included. The procedures will be explained to the subjects previous and risks and benefits will be also explained. The subjects will be voluntary to participate in the study and should accept by signing the informed consent form. This must include the methodological design and the experimental procedures.</p>

[GUIDELINES]
<p>The study will consist in a quasi-experimental research that aims to verify the changes in health status and physical fitness after 12 weeks of water aerobics lessons. The variables that we intend to measure could be categorized into different groups, namely, i) anthropometry, with the measurement of height, body mass by bioimpedance, and circumferences (waist and hip); ii) physical condition, through the evaluation of the explosive strength of the upper limbs (3-kg medicine ball throwing) and lower limbs (countermovement jump), endurance strength of the upper limbs (maximum number of arm pushups) and the lower limbs (chair -stand test) and cardiorespiratory fitness evaluation (YMCA 3-min step-test); iii) lipid profile (triglycerides and cholesterol) and blood pressure. These variables will be assessed during the week before the program implementation (week 0 - pre-training) and the week after the end of the program (week 13 - post-training). The evaluations will be developed on two different days separated by 72 hours. On the first day, the participants’ anthropometric characteristics, lipid profile and blood pressure should be measured, followed by an assessment of explosive strength of the upper and lower limbs. On the second day of assessment, endurance strength and cardiorespiratory tests should be performed. All variables will be assessed by experienced researchers and scientific, valid and reliable methods will be used to measure those variables (ACSM, 2013; Mayhew et al., 1997; Rikli et al., 1999; Stewart et al., 2011). In every evaluation the participant will be allowed to rest for fully recover from the previous evaluation. The subjects will be instructed in advance to refrain from exercise, alcohol and caffeine consumption during the evaluation period.</p>
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<p>The potential subjects will be informed of the right to refuse to participate in the study or to withdraw consent to participate at any time without reprisal. The teachers of water-aerobics classes will also be informed of everything and will be free to accept or give up of the study procedures. No external pressure will be made to conditioning teacher activity, being free to choose and implement the program exercitation that usually is performed.  The contact of main researcher and project responsible will be available for participants and for the institution. One sport academy will be contacted, and the classes will be chosen randomly from the same institution. Participants of different classes will be informed about the study and once they agreed, they will be part of the research.</p>
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<p>The researchers involved will be experienced and aware of society and ethical considerations, that must always take precedence over laws and regulations and procedures. Also, the research will careful assess risks and benefits and will probably benefit the population studied. The confidentiality of data is guaranteed by all researchers that will signed a responsibility term before the beginning of the data collection.</p>

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