Do special exercise programs help people to stay fit?

Many people with heart failure avoid strenuous physical activities. For most people, though, the opposite would be a good idea: Special exercise programs can help to improve your physical fitness and quality of life.
In people with heart failure, the heart can no longer pump enough oxygen-rich blood to the organs, muscles and other tissues in their body. As a result, they may get out of breath and have trouble breathing when they do physically strenuous activities. This can be frightening, and many people with heart failure start avoiding strenuous activities because of it. But if you hardly get any exercise, you become even less fit, which affects your quality of life and independence too.
In order to break this vicious cycle, special exercise programs have been developed for people with heart failure. The exercises in these programs aim to strengthen their cardiovascular system without being too much for their bodies to handle.