Secular trends in physical fitness of Slovenian boys and girls aged 7 to 15 years from 1989 to 2019: a population-based study

Abstract

Using the population-based data we aim to estimate the general population trends of multiple components of physical fitness of children, identify critical structural changes in these trends, and evaluate the potential changes in differences in the test scores between the children. During the entire study period, 1989–2019, median body mass index and triceps skinfold increased in both genders and all age groups. Muscular fitness, in general, showed negative trends, with some exceptions: during the post-2010 period, children were mostly experiencing the improvement of isometric strength of the upper body. The neuromuscular components of physical fitness showed positive trends, especially in girls. Cardiorespiratory fitness has been declining in all age groups until the last decade, with the largest decreases occurring before 2000. In the last decade, the trends reversed. The flexibility indicator revealed the largest differences between boys and girls, with boys mainly experiencing negative and girls mostly positive trends. The variability of the test scores mostly increased during the study period. This increasing variance suggests that—despite generally favourable trends in the last decade—children in Slovenia have been facing increasing inequalities in their development, which can potentially lead to future inequalities in health.

Secular trends in physical fitness of rural Chinese children and adolescents aged 7–18 years from 1985 to 2019

“…Speed in children and adolescents aged 8-15 years in Mozambique, Africa, declined continuously from 1992 to 2012 37 . The trends in Slovenia are almost consistent with our study 15 , with speed quality first decreasing and then rebounding. However, studies from some developed countries 6,[38][39][40][41][42] showed different results that speed remained stable in children after 2000, having previously 43 .…”

“…The explosive power of Croatian and German boys had no significant changes and improved for girls slightly since the beginning of the twenty-first century 14,49 . Slovenia had stable or positive trends (especially for girls) from 2014 to 2019 after the previous downward trend 15 . Positive trends were observed among boys and girls in the United States in the twentieth century and in Greece in the early twenty-first century 50,51 .…”

“…However, we found that the explosive power of rural boys improved from 2015 to 2018 in Shanghai, China 13 , and improved in Japan in the last decade 36 . Some developed countries, such as Slovenia (until 2014) 21 , Lithuania 39 , Italy 41 , Poland 47 , and Brazil 48 , reported negative trends at the beginning of the twenty-first century or throughout the observed period, with many of these studies showing no significant changes 15,39,41,47 or improvement for girls in recent years 21 . The explosive power of Croatian and German boys had no significant changes and improved for girls slightly since the beginning of the twenty-first century 14,49 .…”

SLOfit Lifelong: A model for leveraging citizen science to promote and maintain physical fitness and physical literacy across the lifespan

“…All pilot data collected from adults 19–64 years old were used to construct centile norms for each test item included in the SLOfit Adult test battery. Centile curves were obtained using the Lambda Mu Sigma (LMS) method separately for each gender following methods described elsewhere ( 39 , 40 ). To note: pilot sampling was not nationally-representative, so statisticians used BMI data from a representative sample to calculate sample weights.…”

Mandatory after-school use of step tracker apps improves physical activity, body composition and fitness of adolescents

“…Therefore, the only way to reach the minimum days of physical activity practice for adolescents to be considered active, is to practice physical exercise in their leisure time. However, the level of physical activity in leisure time has decreased to such extent in the last years, that from ages of 9–10 years old until young adulthood, most of the subjects do not reach the minimum recommendations (Corder et al, 2019 ; Farooq et al, 2020 ), resulting in a considerable decrease in physical fitness and a body composition far from healthy parameters (Lovecchio et al, 2020 ; Radulović et al, 2022 ).…”