Recruiting

POWER

Sponsor:

McMaster University

Code:

NCT06780995

Conditions

Stroke

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 19+

Healthy Volunteers: Not accepted

Interventions

Power Exercise for Stroke Recovery (POWER)

Strength Training Engaging Guidelines to Enhance Total Health (STRENGTH)

Study Details

Brief summary:

Weakness is one of the most common consequences of stroke. For the over 750,000 Canadians living with stroke, many daily activities like standing from a chair, walking and balance not only require strength but often efforts in bursts, known as muscle power. Strength training can improve muscle strength and, when performed at higher speeds, can help build muscle power. Current guidelines for stroke recommend strength training but these are commonly performed at lower intensities and do not include any focus on building muscle power. There has been very little research on power training after stroke.

A 10-week power training program for people living with stroke, Power Exercise for Stroke Recovery (POWER-Feasibility, NCT05816811) was recently evaluated. POWER includes 3 phases of progressive exercise: building familiarity with the upper and lower body exercises, then strength, and lastly muscle power. The results from POWER-Feasibility are promising, suggesting that POWER is safe and may improve stroke recovery. POWER-Feasibility was a small study (15 participants), and POWER was not compared to a control intervention.

A pilot randomized controlled trial of POWER (POWER-Pilot) will now be conducted. Sixty people who are at least 6 months after stroke will be recruited. They will be randomly assigned to participate in POWER or standard strength training for stroke at lower intensities and without focus on power training. The feasibility of a randomized study will be examined, and whether POWER can improve walking, strength and balance compared to the control group. Results from POWER-Pilot will help design a larger randomized trial in the future (POWER-RCT), and may ultimately be important for stroke rehabilitation teams to better understand whether power training can help people recovering from stroke.

Conditions

Stroke

Study ID

NCT06780995

Start date

Sep 15, 2025

Status verified date

Dec, 2025

Completion date

Sep 30, 2027

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Feb 28, 2027

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 19+

Healthy Volunteers: Not accepted

Inclusion Criteria:

1. ≥19 years old
2. ≥6 months poststroke,
3. able to walk >10 meters with or without an assistive device
4. have mild to moderate stroke severity (modified Rankin Scale ≤3)
5. without significant cognitive impairment that would preclude safe exercise, screened via Montreal Cognitive Assessment-Blind score <18

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Any contraindications to exercise for people with cardiovascular disease, such as unstable angina, uncontrolled hypertension, orthostatic blood pressure with exercise, or uncontrolled arrhythmias or
2. Actively engaged in or have made plans to engage in stroke rehabilitation services

Study Design

Enrollment

60 participants

Anticipated

Allocation

Randomized

Intervention Model

Parallel Assignment

Primary purpose

Other

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

experimental: Power Exercise for Stroke Recovery (POWER)

POWER involves 3 progressive phases: 1) Familiarization (1 week), 2) Strength (4 weeks, 2-3 sets, 5-8 repetitions), and 3) Power (5 weeks, 2-3 sets, 15-20 repetitions, fast tempo).

active comparator: Strength Training Engaging Guidelines to Enhance Total Health (STRENGTH)

STRENGTH is based on current resistance exercise training (RET) clinical practice guidelines for stroke with no focus on power.

Interventions

Power Exercise for Stroke Recovery (POWER)

POWER incorporates 3 progressive phases: Phase 1 Familiarization (Week 1) as a low-intensity version of the training program to acclimate participants to the movements (body weight resisted or light weights, RPE 2-3 "Fairly light" to "Moderate"). Phase 2 Strength (Weeks 2-5) progresses loads to achieve volitional fatigue within 6-8 repetitions (RPE 7-9 "Very hard" to "Very very hard"). Phase 3 Power (Weeks 6-10) will use intensities RPE 4-6 ("Somewhat hard" to "Very hard"), and exercises will be executed at the highest possible velocity to focus on muscle power. The Power phase is intentionally designed with exercises to emphasize functional movements such as fast sit to stands, lunging and calf raises.

Strength Training Engaging Guidelines to Enhance Total Health (STRENGTH)

STRENGTH is based on current clinical practice guidelines for RET after stroke. It will include the same Familiarization week as the POWER program (Week 1), followed by progressive conventional RET involving 3 sets of 10-15 repetitions at moderate to high intensities (RPE 4-5 "Somewhat hard" to "Hard") (Weeks 2-10). The external resistance will be progressed to maintain this target RPE range. STRENGTH is matched with POWER in length (60-minute sessions over 10 weeks), frequency (3x/week) and format (in-person supervision).

Primary outcome measure

  • Feasibility: Randomization - Percentage of participants allocated as assigned [ Time Frame: Through study completion, over 24 months ]
  • Feasibility: Randomization - Clinically important difference between groups [ Time Frame: Through study completion, over 24 months ]
  • Feasibility: Allocation concealment [ Time Frame: Through study completion, over 24 months ]
  • Feasibility: Assessor blinding - Number of occurrences of unblinding [ Time Frame: Through study completion, over 24 months ]
  • Feasibility: Contamination - Number of participants exposed to other intervention arm [ Time Frame: Through study completion, over 24 months ]
  • Feasibility: Recruitment rate - Number of participants recruited per month [ Time Frame: Through study completion, over 24 months ]
  • Feasibility: Retention rate - Percentage of participants with follow up data [ Time Frame: Through study completion, over 24 months ]
  • Feasibility: Participant and assessor burden - Percentage of participants completing study assessments in ≤1.5h [ Time Frame: Through study completion, over 24 months ]
  • Feasibility: Participant and assessor burden - Participant rating of the burden of assessments [ Time Frame: Through study completion, over 24 months ]
  • Feasibility: Safety - Number of serious adverse events [ Time Frame: Through study completion, over 24 months ]
  • Feasibility: Treatment effect - Availability of clinical outcome data [ Time Frame: Through study completion, over 24 months ]
  • Functional mobility: Timed Up and Go (TUG) test (self- and fast-paced) [ Time Frame: Baseline (0 weeks), post-intervention (10 weeks), follow-up (18 weeks) ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Ada Tang, PT PhD

289-426-5768atang@mcmaster.ca

Hanna Fang

289-426-0468fangh@mcmaster.ca

Locations

The University of British Columbia - Okanagan Campus

Recruiting

Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, V1V 1V7

Contacts

Brodie Sakakibara, PhD

250-807-8505brodie@ubc.ca

Kenneth Noguchi, PhD

kenny.noguchi@ubc.ca

Principal Investigator:

Brodie Sakakibara, PhD

McMaster University

Recruiting

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8S1C7

Contacts

Ada Tang, PT PhD

289-426-5768atang@mcmaster.ca

Hanna Fang

289-426-0468fangh@mcmaster.ca

Principal Investigator:

Ada Tang, PT PhD

More Information

Sponsor

McMaster University

Last update posted

Dec 23, 2025

Last verified

Dec, 2025

Keywords

  • Stroke
  • Aging
  • Resistance training
  • Power training
  • Physical function
  • Community exercise
  • Quality of life
  • Rehabilitation

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-10. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by McMaster University on 2025-12-23.