Introduction: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects that a group exercise activity managed by elderly volunteers would have on the physical function of older women after they participated in a formal exercise program taught by fitness experts.

Methods: Subjects were 47 community-dwelling older women who had completed a 3-month exercise program led by expert instructors in Kasama City, Ibaraki. After completing this exercise program, 28 subjects continued to participate in a group exercise activity led by elderly volunteers for approximately 11 months. The remaining 19 subjects did not join the group activities after the formal program. In both the initial, expert-led exercise program and the subsequent, volunteer-led group activity, subjects mainly engaged in the square-stepping exercise, which is a novel exercise for improving lower extremity physical function. In order to assess participants' physical function, we conducted five physical performance tests at both the baseline and follow-up; the former is the last day of the exercise program and the latter is approximately a year after the baseline.

Results: Two-way ANOVA demonstrated a significant interaction in the timed up and go test (P=0.003). The performance of subjects who had participated in the volunteer-managed group activity improved between the baseline and follow-up tests (P=0.007).

Conclusion: Participating in a group exercise activity managed by elderly volunteers can improve mobility skills of older women who had previously completed a formal exercise program led by expert instructors.

Health issues with workers include many aspects that scientific research in physical fitness and sports medicine can contribute to. Nevertheless, in Japan, there are few studies on the health problems in workers reported in the field of physical fitness and sports medicine. One reason could be the difficulty of obtaining cooperation in research from companies. This paper introduces results of epidemiological studies on health problems in workers by the Physical Fitness Research Institute. Our research serves as an example of physical fitness and sports medicine studies, including methods for securing fields for research. For the last decade, various epidemiological studies on worker’s mental health, sleep, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and labor related issues have been conducted in our research institute. Most of these studies indicated that lack of physical activity is associated with these indicators in Japanese workers. In recent years, we have also been conducting observational and interventional studies focusing on sedentary behavior in workers. Physical activity is deeply linked to worker’s health, therefore, the important approach to start a research in occupational health is to plan research that solves the company’s health challenges. In occupational health, the needs to promote physical activity and to reduce sitting time are growing under the movement of “Health and Productivity Management” and burden of the COVID-19 pandemic. We believe that current challenges provide an opportunity to advance physical fitness and sports medicine research in occupational health.