The school proved to be an ideal setting for promoting physical activity and achieving the required daily activity levels.

A cross-sectional study was carried out to analyse, through a limited number of fitness tests, the main conditioning and coordinative abilities in children aged 8-9 years, and their relationship with gender, anthropometric variables and physical activity habits. The height and weight of 256 boys and 241 girls were measured and information about physical activity habits was collected using a self-administered questionnaire. Physical performance was assessed by means of a few standardised tests: 'sit & reach', medicine-ball forward throw, standing long jump, 20 m running speed, and forward roll test. In both boys and girls, body weight and body mass index (BMI) were positively correlated with the medicine-ball throw performances and negatively correlated for the standing long jump and speed tests, while no association was found with tests measuring back flexibility and total body coordination. Daily physical activity and participation in sport were not significantly correlated with body weight and BMI, but were positively associated with children's motor performance. The standardised fitness tests selected in the current study have been found to be suitable to identify fitness levels of primary school children. Thanks to their limited number and ease of measurement, they can be used in any school context to classify children and for monitoring the effects of targeted interventions promoting physical activity.

Background The World Health Organization stated an average of 60 min of Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity (MVPA) that children should accumulate every day. Nevertheless physical inactivity is growing and, due to restrictions imposed during pandemic, PA levels of children might be more negatively affected. The study aimed to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on the PA of an Italian sample of primary school children by comparing it before and during COVID-19 considering gender differences. Methods A pre-post analysis (October 2019–January 2021) was conducted using a randomized sample (N = 77) from the I-MOVE study settled in an Italian primary school. Both objective (Actigraph accelerometers) and self-reported (PAQ-c questionnaires) assessments of PA were performed. Changes were compared using T-Student and Chi-Square test. Gender differences were calculated using Anova. Results Weekly and daily minutes time spent in MVPA significantly decreased respectively by − 30.59 ± 120.87 and − 15.32 ± 16.21 from before to during pandemic while the weekly time spent in sedentary behaviour increased (+ 1196.01 ± 381.49). PAQ-c scores followed the same negative trend (− 0.87 ± 0.72). Boys seem to have suffered more than girls from the imposed restrictions. Conclusion These findings outline the need for strategies to promote PA and reduce sedentary behaviours in children to prevent COVID-19 restriction long-term effects.

The proposed school-based MVPA program showed effectiveness and feasibility. The differences observed by gender highlight the need to use different strategies to increase the involvement of all the participants.

Background: The school gives access to children, regardless of age, ethnicity, gender and socio-economic class and can be identified as the key environment in which to promote children’s physical activity (PA). The guidelines of the European Union recommend accumulating at least 10-min bouts of PA to reach the daily 60 min. Active breaks (ABs) led by teachers inside the classroom represent a good strategy to promote PA. The aim of this pilot and feasibility study was to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness in terms of PA level of an AB programme in children aged 8–9 years attending primary school. Methods: A pre-post quasi-experimental pilot and feasibility study was performed in two primary school classes, one of which was assigned to a 14-week AB intervention (AB group) and the other to the control group (CG). At baseline and at follow-up, children were monitored for sedentary and motor activity during an entire week using ActiGraph Accelerometer (ActiLife6 wGT3X-BT). The satisfaction of children and teachers was assessed by self-administered questionnaires. Results: In the pre-post comparison, AB group (n = 16) showed a reduction in the minutes spent in weekly sedentary activity (−168.7 min, p > 0.05), an increase in the number of step counts (+14,026.9, p < 0.05) and in time spent in moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA): weekly MVPA: +64.4 min, daily MVPA: +8.05 min, percentage of MVPA: +0.70%. On the contrary, CG showed a worsening in all variables. ANCOVA analysis, after adjusting for baseline values, showed significant differences between the AB group and CG for time spent in MVPA, percentage of MVPA and step counts. The satisfaction of children and teachers was good. Teachers were able to adapt the AB protocol to the needs of the school curriculum, thus confirming the feasibility of the AB programme. Conclusions: This pilot and feasibility study showed the feasibility and effectiveness of the AB protocol and represented the basis for a future controlled trial.

As introduced in the preliminary study previously carried out, the spread of technology in sports provides a monitoring of objective activity, accurate and not invasive. This led to the creation of a technological instrument, Power Glove, which investigates specific aspects of sport performance. The aim of this study is to evaluate the difference of serve performances through a test, to establish its feasibility and to obtain information that will allow to determine the calibration of the final instrument, taking into account the metrological characteristics of a measuring instrument. The carried out test, considers the serve, one of the fundamentals of volleyball, which starts ay every action of the game. The study was conducted on a sample divided into two groups: group A composed of 12 female volleyball players aged 12-16 years; and group B composed of 10 female volleyball players aged 18-25 years. It is a controlled and designed clinical study method in which subjects are exposed to various tests of strength, speed and precision in an alternated or simultaneous and supervised manner.

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Nowadays, recreational sports activities are focused on health and wellness aspects for a physiological study on the effects of the elite sport due to the spread of recreational sport, especially football. This work addresses the physical benefits originated from recreational five-aside football and aims at the perceptions about selfevaluation of the physical and the psychological data. It also proposes a questionnaire in a group of young men aged 23 to 29 who played amateur five-aside football for 8 weeks just 2-3 times a week. The requests basing on the overall research conclusions on the studies performed on recreational football (Kustrup et al., 2010). The most significant results showed that practicing amateur sports activities makes you feel better both physically and psychologically (respectively 87,3% e 93,3% of the answers) and it is less tiring and stressful than playing football agonistically (respectively 80% e 80% of the answers) or practicing strength training or interval running training. Furthermore, according to the data complex, it can be potentially satisfactory from the point of the view healthy and well-ness sport that can improve general well-being and it can prevent lethal diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases and obesity. In conclusion, it can be affirmed that recreational five-aside football can produce not only physical benefits, as Kustrup's article shows, but also significant psychological benefits, which makes you feel better and more relaxed.