Covid Pandemic Effects on the Physical Fitness of Primary School Children: Results of the German EMOTIKON Project

Sports Medicine - Open

Original Research Article

Urs Granacher¹  Christian Puta²  Florian Bähr³  Paula Teich⁴  Thea Fühner⁴  Reinhold Kliegl⁴ 

[1] Department of Sport and Sport Science, Exercise and Human Movement Science, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany;Department of Sports Medicine and Health Promotion, Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, Jena, Germany;Center for Interdisciplinary Prevention of Diseases Related to Professional Activities, Jena, Germany;Center for Sepsis Control and Care (CSCC), Jena University Hospital/ Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Jena, Germany;Division of Sports and Movement Sciences, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany;Division of Training and Movement Science, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany;

关键词: Sars-CoV-2;    Cohort study;    Cardiorespiratory endurance;    Muscle power;    Physical fitness;    Youth;    EMOTIKON;    Linear mixed models;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s40798-023-00624-1

 received in 2022-11-25, accepted in 2023-07-31,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundIn spring of 2020, the Sars-CoV-2 incidence rate increased rapidly in Germany and around the world. Throughout the next 2 years, schools were temporarily closed and social distancing measures were put in place to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Did these social restrictions and temporary school lockdowns affect children’s physical fitness? The EMOTIKON project annually tests the physical fitness of all third-graders in the Federal State of Brandenburg, Germany. The tests assess cardiorespiratory endurance (6-min-run test), coordination (star-run test), speed (20-m sprint test), lower (powerLOW, standing long jump test), and upper (powerUP, ball-push test) limbs muscle power, and static balance (one-legged stance test with eyes closed). A total of 125,893 children were tested in the falls from 2016 to 2022. Primary analyses focused on 98,510 keyage third-graders (i.e., school enrollment according to the legal key date, aged 8 to 9 years) from 515 schools. Secondary analyses included 27,383 older-than-keyage third-graders (i.e., OTK, delayed school enrollment or repetition of a grade, aged 9 to 10 years), who have been shown to exhibit lower physical fitness than expected for their age. Linear mixed models fitted pre-pandemic quadratic secular trends, and took into account differences between children and schools.ResultsThird-graders exhibited lower cardiorespiratory endurance, coordination, speed and powerUP in the Covid pandemic cohorts (2020–2022) compared to the pre-pandemic cohorts (2016–2019). Children’s powerLOW and static balance were higher in the pandemic cohorts compared to the pre-pandemic cohorts. From 2020 to 2021, coordination, powerLOW and powerUP further declined. Evidence for some post-pandemic physical fitness catch-up was restricted to powerUP. Cohen’s |ds| for comparisons of the pandemic cohorts 2020–2022 with pre-pandemic cohorts 2016–2019 ranged from 0.02 for powerLOW to 0.15 for coordination. Within the pandemic cohorts, keyage children exhibited developmental losses ranging from approximately 1 month for speed to 5 months for cardiorespiratory endurance. For powerLOW and static balance, the positive pandemic effects translate to developmental gains of 1 and 7 months, respectively. Pre-pandemic secular trends may account for some of the observed differences between pandemic and pre-pandemic cohorts, especially in powerLOW, powerUP and static balance. The pandemic further increased developmental delays of OTK children in cardiorespiratory endurance, powerUP and balance.ConclusionsThe Covid-19 pandemic was associated with declines in several physical fitness components in German third-graders. Pandemic effects are still visible in 2022. Health-related interventions should specifically target those physical fitness components that were negatively affected by the pandemic (cardiorespiratory endurance, coordination, speed).

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

【 图 表 】

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