Effects of Pilates Matwork Core Exercises on Functioning in Middle-Aged Adult Women with Chronic Nonspecific Low Back Pain Through Flexion Relaxation Phenomenon Analysis: A Pilot RCT
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objectives: Pilates is frequently recommended for patients with Chronic Nonspecific Low Back Pain (CNLBP) due to its potential to enhance posture, muscle strength, trunk flexibility, and stability. However, to date, there is no robust evidence supporting the effectiveness of Pilates in managing CNLBP. This study aimed to assess the effects of 8 × 8 Pilates Matwork core exercises on pain and functioning in middle-aged adult women with CNLBP, through a flexion relaxation phenomenon (FRP) analysis. Methods: We included middle adult women (n = 21) with diagnosis of CNLBP and a Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) > 4. The experimental group underwent a treatment of eight Pilates Matwork sessions, biweekly for 4 weeks, lasting about 40 min. The control group underwent standardized exercises used for managing CNLBP. Outcome measures included NRS, Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), Quebec Back Pain Disability Scale (QBPDS), and the FRP ratio via surface electromyography during trunk maximum flexion. We evaluated the participants at the baseline (T0), at the end of the 4-week treatment (T1), and at 4 weeks after the end of the treatment, at 8 weeks from the baseline (T2). Results: In this pilot RCT, 21 middle-aged adult women affected by CNLBP were randomly allocated with a ratio of 1:1 in the Pilates group, and in parallel in the control group. The experimental group showed a significant improvement in ODI and QBPDS scores compared to the control group, maintained at follow-up for ODI, along with an NRS reduction at T2. About FRP, Pilates has proven to be comparable to conventional treatment, showing no significant difference in FRR at T1 and T2. Only the experimental group exceeded the 9.5 cutoff at T2, as a protective predictive index for CNLBP. Conclusions: This pilot RCT provided preliminary evidence that Pilates might be an effective rehabilitation method, enhancing functioning and pain management in middle-aged adult women affected by CNLBP. The FRP study proves to be efficient in translating clinical assessments into rehabilitation assessment measures.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".