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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1359701
This article is part of the Research Topic Physical Exercise and Metabolic Health in Children and Adolescents View all 9 articles

Temporal changes in the physical fitness of Chinese adolescents aged 13-18 years: an analysis of eight national successive surveys over three decades

Provisionally accepted
Kaixuan Zhao Kaixuan Zhao 1*Ruolan Tang Ruolan Tang 2
  • 1 Dankook University, Yongin, Republic of Korea
  • 2 Xinjiang Normal University, Urumqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Region, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objective: The aim of this study was to assess temporal changes in physical fitness of Chinese adolescents aged 13-18 years from 1985 to 2019. Methods: Body size /composition and physical fitness indicators, including body height, weight, body mass index (BMI), speed, power, flexibility, muscular endurance, and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), were selected from Chinese boys and girls aged 13-18 years from eight Chinese National Surveillance on Students’ Constitution and Health from 1985 to 2019. Temporal changes in means were estimated by sample-weighted linear regression at the test × sex × age level, and national trends were estimated by a post-stratification population weighting procedure. Results: Overall mean body height, weight and BMI increased significantly for Chinese adolescents over 34 years. There was a small improvement for boys in speed (Effect size [ES] = -0.21, 95% confidence interval [CI] = -0.44~0.02), a small improvement for boys in power (ES = 0.24, 95% CI = -0.20~0.69), a small improvement for girls in flexibility (ES = 0.45, 95% CI = 0.15~0.76), a moderate decline for boys (ES=-0.53 95% CI = -0.84~-0.21) and a moderate improvement for girls (ES = 0.61, 95% CI = -0.03~1.26) in muscular endurance, and large declines in cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) for boys (ES=0.93, 95% CI=0.64~1.21) and girls (ES=0.93, 95% CI=0.58~1.27) from 1985 to 2019. These trends in each component of fitness were more positive for adolescents aged 13-15 years than that of adolescents aged 16-18 years in both sexes, except for girls in flexibility. Conclusion: The decline in CRF was most pronounced among Chinese children and adolescents from 1985 to 2019, suggesting a future decline in population health that needs attention.

    Keywords: adolescents, Physical Fitness, Body Size, temporal changes, Public Health

    Received: 21 Dec 2023; Accepted: 22 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zhao and Tang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Kaixuan Zhao, Dankook University, Yongin, Republic of Korea

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.