Background: High blood pressure increases various cardiovascular events about 2 to 3 times in a person. The purpose of this study is to recognize the effect of a course of pilates exercise on hypertension, nitric oxide, and resting heart rate in the eldrlymen with hypertension.

Materials and Methods: Subjects of this quasi-experimental research included 30 elderly men with hypertension grade one(in the range of systolic-diastolic 140/90 to 159/99mm Hg) who participated voluntarily and accessibly in the study and were divided randomly into two experimental peer (15 people) and control (15 people) groups. Weight, height and BMI of subjects were 75±80, 170±175 and 25-26, respectively. The experimental group did selected exercise of Pilates for eight weeks (three one-hour sessions per week). Desired variables of the subjects of both groups were evaluated 24 hours before the start of exercise and 24 hours after the last session. Data analysis was conducted using dependent and independent t-test by SPSS16 statistical software at the significant level of p≥0.05.

Results: The research results showed that the eight-week pilates exercise gave rise to reduction in blood pressure(p≤0.05) as well as resting heart rate (p≤0.05) and to increase in nitric oxide of elderly men with hypertension (p≤0.05).

Conclusion: The eight-week pilates exercise reduced blood pressure and resting heart rate and increased the production of nitric oxide in elderly men. So, it seems that the regular physical exercise can be effective as a preventive factor in the outbreak of cardiovascular diseases of the elderly men.