This exploratory overview aims to assess complex interventions in physical medicine. Training therapy ("Trainingstherapie" in German) is a guided and supervised form of training (endurance and strength) following training-physiological principles. Training therapy is a domain of the wider category of exercise therapy. This systematic review (of systematic reviews and meta-analyses) aims to gather evidence on efficacy and safety of training therapy for different indications.

In the absence of an explicit and generally accepted definition of "medical training therapy" (medizinische Trainingstherapie), its boundaries to other interventions in the field of physical medicine, such as exercise therapy ("Krankengymnastik/Heilgymnastik"), remain unclear. Most of the scientific evidence is published in English, where broader terms like "exercise therapy", "training therapy" or sometimes only "exercise" are used.

The limited evidence indicates that training therapy reduces overall and disease-specific mortality (coronary artery disease), relieves pain (osteoarthritis of the knee), improves function (osteoarthritis of the knee), improves health-related quality of life (rheumatoid arthritis, COPD), decreases the recurrence rate (low back pain), reduces the number of days on sick leave (low back pain) and reduces hospital admissions (chronic heart failure, coronary artery disease, COPD). There is no increase found in intervention-associated mortality (chronic heart failure) or adverse events (rheumatoid arthritis, chronic heart failure, COPD, chronic heart failure, coronary artery disease).

Recommendations about design details for specific programmes involving training therapy cannot be drawn from this highly aggregated evidence. In addition, this systematic review can neither make statements related to single interventions in the field of physical medicine, nor be used for the appraisal of such single interventions.