High Intensity Exercise for Increasing Fitness in Patients With Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

The exercise groups will receive identical exercise prescription for the first two months of the intervention, after which the HIE group will incorporate HIIT in their exercise regimen. The reason for this approach is to include a period of general conditioning and progressively increase intensity prior to submitting volunteers to HIE. This approach considers participant safety as arrhythmias may be uncovered during the first two months of MIE training. It will also improve participant compliance by increasing exercise self-efficacy and confidence prior to commencing HIIT.

A training program will be developed individually for each subject with the goal of increasing duration and intensity consistent with exercise training principles. Workouts will vary with respect to mode (walk, cycle) and duration (30 - 60 minutes). Each subject will be assigned an exercise physiologist and a heart rate monitor so that each session can be tracked and recorded. The first few exercise training sessions in both exercise groups (MIE and HIE) will supervised at our hospital based fitness centre until the subject is confident to complete the training independently.