Health-related physical fitness and weight status in Hong Kong adolescents

BMC Public Health

Research Article

G Neil Thomas¹  Jeffrey R Day²  Alison M McManus³  Sai-Yin Ho⁴  Kwok-Kei Mak⁴  Wing-Sze Lo⁴  Tai-Hing Lam⁴ 

[1] Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK;Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong;Institute of Human Performance, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong;School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong;

关键词: Weight Status;    Physical Fitness;    Fitness Test;    Normal Weight Group;    Overweight Adolescent;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-10-88

 received in 2009-06-12, accepted in 2010-02-23,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThis study was designed to investigate the relation between health-related physical fitness and weight status in Hong Kong adolescents.Methods3,204 students aged 12-18 years participated in the Hong Kong Student Obesity Surveillance (HKSOS) project in 2006-2007. Anthropometric measures (height, weight) and health-related fitness (push-up, sit-up, sit-and-reach, 9-minute run) were assessed. Body mass index (BMI) was computed to classify participants into normal weight, underweight (Grade I, II/III), overweight, and obese groups. The associations of health-related physical fitness with BMI and weight status were examined by partial correlation coefficients and analysis of covariance, respectively.ResultsMore boys than girls were overweight or obese (18.0% vs 8.7%), but more girls than boys were underweight (22.3% vs 16.7%). Boys performed significantly (P < 0.001) better in sit-up (38.8 vs 31.6 times/min) and 9-minute run (1632.1 vs 1353.2 m), but poorer in sit-and-reach (27.4 vs 32.2 cm) than girls. All four physical fitness tests were significantly positively correlated with each other in both sexes, and BMI was only weakly correlated with sit up and sit-and-reach tests in boys. Decreasing performance (P for trend < 0.05) was observed from normal weight to overweight and obese for push-up, sit-up, and 9-minute run in both sexes. From normal weight to Grade I and Grade II/III underweight, decreasing performance (P for trend < 0.05) for sit-up and sit-and-reach in both sexes and for push-up in boys was observed.ConclusionsThe relations between BMI and health-related physical fitness in adolescents were non-linear. Overweight/obese and underweight adolescents had poorer performance in push-up and sit-up tests than normal weight adolescents. Different aspects of health-related physical fitness may serve as immediate indicators of potential health risks for underweight and overweight adolescents.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Mak et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.