The purpose of this study was to investigate the acute and long term effects of vibration and stretching training on range of motion (ROM) of shoulder and hip joints in female elderly. Thirty female elderly (≧65 years of age) were participated in this study. The ROM was measured prior to training, then, randomly assigned to vibration-stretching (VT, n = 10), static-stretching (SE, n = 10) or control (CON, n = 10) groups. During the 6 weeks training session, VT group performed static stretching training with vibration (1.5 mm, 25 Hz, 3 × 30s, 7 exercises, 3 times/week) and SE group performed static stretching training (3 × 30s, 7 exercises, 3 times/week). The ROM was measured after completion of the first and 6 weeks training. The data was analyzed by statistical ANCOVA and significance was set at α = .05. The acute phase showed that only VT was significantly increased ROM of glenohumeral adduction (p ＜ .05). In addition, the long term phase showed that VT in ROM of shoulder joint (glenohumeral extension, flexion and rotation) and hip joint (hip extension and flexion) were significantly higher than SE and CON (p ＜ .05) groups, but SE showed significantly higher ROM only in of hip flexion than CON (p ＜ .05). The findings suggested that static stretching training combined with vibration on the improvement of ROM in female elderly was better than static stretching training.
