PHYSICAL FITNESS PERFORMANCE AS DETERMINED BY THE EUROFIT TEST BATTERY IN THAI OVERWEIGHT/OBESE CHILDREN

Abstract

Introduction: In Thailand, the prevalence of overweight/obese (OW/OB) children is rapidly increasing. Those children are likely to continue obese when getting older which obesity status can affect their physiological functions in later life. For physical fitness testing in children, the Eurofit Physical Fitness (Eurofit) Test Battery has shown adequate reliability, validity and widely used. Unfortunately, there are no data on physical fitness in OW/OB children as determined by this test in Thailand. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate differences in physical fitness performances between normal-weight (NW) and OW/OB
children (both the boys and the girls) by using the Eurofit test battery. Methods: A total of 85 children between the ages of 10 and 12 years voluntarily participated in this study. They were further divided into 2 groups according to their body mass index (BMI); 43 children for NW group (14 boys and 29 girls) and 42 children for OW/OB group (14 boys and 28 girls). The Eurofit test battery was used to assess 5 aspects of physical fitness test including grip strength test, standing long jump test, sit and reach flexibility test, shuttle run test and 20 m endurance shuttle test. Results: In the boys, data of standing board jump, shuttle run test, 20 m endurance shuttle test were significantly different between NW and OW/OB group (p <0.05). The standing board jump shuttle run test, and 20 m endurance shuttle test in NW group were greater than OW/OB group. Except the data of flexibility and grip strength test were not significantly different between groups. In the girls, data of grip strength was significant difference between groups (p <0.05), whereas there were no significant differences in standing board jump, flexibility, shuttle run and endurance shuttle run tests. Conclusion: As determined by the Eurofit Test Battery, dynamic performances including power, agility and endurance in the overweight/obese boys were worse than the NW groups. Whereas the overweight/obese girls had greater hand and forearm
muscles strength than the NW groups.

Keywords: The Eurofit Physical