Dr. Kerry Courneya

So yeah, lots of benefits across the board in terms of quality of life benefits and also disease and survival benefits.

So some of it's been showing that the higher intensity exercise is better.

A lot of these studies have done high intensity interval training, but it very much depends on the patient's ability and how they're responding to the treatments.

Some patients will get a very first chemotherapy infusion and they are completely wiped out.

They got nausea and vomiting.

They have diarrhea.

They have sickness, and it's very difficult.

So we have to individualize the exercise for them.

Other patients don't even know they're on chemotherapy.

They continue working and continue going through it, and they're able to do a much more demanding exercise program.

But the weight training has also been shown to be very important.

I mentioned that improvement in chemotherapy completion.

And one of the studies that we did, it was actually the weight training group that completed more of their chemotherapy compared to the aerobic exercise group or the usual care group.

And so this weight training group was able to put on over a kilogram of lean muscle while they were on chemotherapy.

And this might help with the metabolism of these chemotherapy drugs.

So higher intensity exercise seems to be good.

Weight training seems to be very good during these treatments.

Most of the protocols we've tested are three days per week of weight training, maybe eight exercises covering all the major muscle groups, moderate intensity, so eight to 12 repetitions before failure.

So I would consider kind of a standard full body type of weight training program.

Many of the other trials have done two days per week.