european college of sport science

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
IMPROVEMENT IN CHILDREN’S CARDIO-RESPIRATORY FITNESS FOLLOWING A TWO-YEAR SCHOOL-BASED DAILY
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY INTERVENTION
RESALAND, G.K., ANDERSSEN, S.A., MAMEN, A., ANDERSEN, L.B.
SOGN AND FJORDANE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
INTRODUCTION: Cardio-respiratory fitness is strongly associated with good health in children as well as in adults. There are conflicting
results concerning the effect of increased physical activity (PA) on cardio-respiratory fitness in children. This may be due to the duration of
studies or the volume of PA performed, among other things. The school provides an excellent setting in which to enhance levels of PA,
and thereby possibly increase fitness. Few interventions in school assess VO2peak directly, which is a methodological weakness. We
therefore started a 60-minute two-year school-based PA intervention for nine-year-olds in two Norwegian towns assessing fitness directly.
To our knowledge the present study breaks new ground by being the first teacher-controlled daily PA intervention of this magnitude
with direct measurement of VO2peak. The aim of the present study was to describe changes in children’s cardio-respiratory fitness
following a daily physical activity intervention in two Norwegian rural towns. METHODS: In total, 259 children (age 9.3±0.3 years) were
invited to participate, of whom 256 participated. The intervention group (63 boys, 62 girls) carried out 60-minute teacher-controlled daily
physical activity over two school years. The control group (62 boys, 69 girls) had the standard amount of physical education (45 minutes
twice each week) in school. 188 (73.4%) children successfully completed both pre- and post-peak oxygen uptake test (VO2peak).
VO2peak was directly measured during a continuous progressive treadmill protocol where the children ran until exhaustion. Body mass
and height were collected from all 256 children at baseline. There was no difference in BMI between those included (188) or those excluded
(68). Change in VO2peak was analysed with a General Linear Model with sex and location as fixed factors, and baseline
VO2peak as a covariate. RESULTS: Mean baseline values were 52.8±6.5 ml kg−1 min−1 (boys) and 46.9±7.2 ml kg−1
min−1 (girls). The intervention group significantly increased their VO2peak (4.3±4.0 ml kg−1 min−1), while the control
group did not (0.4±3.5 ml kg−1 min−1) (p