May-Britt Skoradal ^1* Tórur Sjúrðarson ¹ Helgi W. Olsen ^1,2 Eli Nolsøe Leifsson ^1,3 Vincent Pelikan ⁴ Magni Mohr ^1,5 Annika H. Davidsen ¹

• ¹ Centre of Health Sciences, University of the Faroe Islands, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands
• ² University of the Faroe Islands, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands
• ³ Other, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands
• ⁴ Faculty of Sport Science, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Lower Saxony, Germany
• ⁵ Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

The proportion of older people increases globally, which calls for sustainable interventions promoting healthy aging. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the potential of Football Fitness as a sustainable model to promote quality of life, mental health, and physical function for elderly people.The study was conducted in collaboration with a municipality, a football club, and a university, and was designed as a randomized controlled trial. A total of 66 people (34 women, 32 men) older than 60 years were randomly assigned (60/40) to a Football Fitness (FOT) (n=38, 20 women, 18 men) and a control group (CON) (n=28, 14 women, 14 men). FOT participated in Football Fitness for 12 weeks. Quality of life (QoL) and mental wellbeing were determined pre-and post-intervention. Physical loading and Flow experience were measured in one representative training session. Blood pressure (BP), Yo-Yo Intermittent endurance test level 1 (Yo-Yo IE1), sprint performance, postural balance and body composition) were also performed pre-and post-intervention.Results: An improvement in mental well-being was observed for both groups from pre-to post-intervention (p values < .001) with no between-group differences. Regarding QoL, the environment domain improved in FOT compared to CON (p = .02). Mean Flow (M = 5.69; SD = 1.07) and perceived importance (M = 4.20; SD = 1.42) and average experienced difficulty was M = 5.23 (SD = 2.67), perceived skill (M = 5.23; SD = 2.56), and perceived balance (M = 5.64; SD = 1.56). These levels of flow can be characterized as being high. A between-group effect (P=0.02) existed for systolic BP, which decreased (P<0.01) by -5% [-8;-1%] in CON and remained unchanged in FOT. Both groups improved the Yo-Yo IE1 to a similar extent, with 28% [11;44%] (P=0.001) in FOT and 27% [9;46%] in CON (P=0.005). Postural balance improved (P=0.004) by 38% [13;63%] in FOT only, resulting in a superior (P=0.01) balance score in FOT compared to CON post-intervention (P=0.004).Football Fitness improved the environmental quality of life domain in elderly and appears to be a feasible group activity and postural balance in elderly with high flow and physical loading during training.