BACKGROUND The debate about a possible relationship between aerobic fitness and motor skills with cognitive development in children has recently re-emerged, because of the decrease in children's aerobic fitness and the concomitant pressure of schools to enhance cognitive performance. As the literature in young children is scarce, we examined the cross-sectional and longitudinal relationship of ...

Cardiovascular activity has been shown to be positively associated with gray and white matter volume of, amongst others, frontal and temporal brain regions in older adults. This is particularly true for the hippocampus, a brain structure that plays an important role in learning and memory, and whose decline has been related to the development of Alzheimer's disease. In the current study, we wer...

The objective of the present systematic review was to investigate whether physical fitness in childhood and adolescence is a predictor of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors, events and syndromes, quality of life and low back pain later in life. Physical fitness-related components were: cardiorespiratory fitness, musculoskeletal fitness, motor fitness and body composition. Adiposity was c...

Recent studies have shown that during unimanual motor tasks, aging adults show bilateral recruitment of primary motor cortex (M1), while younger adults show a suppression of the ipsilateral motor cortex. Additional work has indicated that increased bilateral M1 recruitment in older adults may be deleterious when performing some motor tasks. However, higher levels of physical fitness are associa...

Using a quasiexperimental design, the authors examine whether fourth- and fifth-grade students exposed to a developmental physical education (PE) curriculum, Michigan's Exemplary Physical Education Curriculum (EPEC), demonstrated stronger motor skill-specific self-efficacy and perceptions of physical activity competence, physical activity levels, motor skills, and physical fitness than did stud...

Children with the developmental coordination disorder have difficulties in performing several movement tasks. The present study examined the role of the developmental coordination disorder in children’s physical fitness in the context of Greek primary education. One hundred fifty-four pupils participated in the study. The Movement Assessment Battery for Children was used to assess their motor c...

OBJECTIVE Atherogenesis involves an inflammatory process that occurs early in life even though clinical symptoms are not observed until adulthood. Two important protective factors for low-grade inflammation may be physical activity (PA) and fitness. We examined the independent associations of objective and subjective measurements of PA and fitness with low-grade inflammation in European adolesc...

During adolescence, a drop of interest in physical activity in girls’ free time and a stagnation in some physical fitness indicators can be observed. The physical fitness of a sample of 14,920 girls from three different types of secondary-school educational programmes (academic, technical and vocational) with different amounts of physical education lessons in the curriculum was analysed. Data f...

Improving the motor fitness of mentally retarded children is of importance for their health. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of a chosen physical and motor fitness training program on the static and dynamic balance of mentally retarded female students. Thirty-eight high school students (average age 18.63 ± 1.3 years, average height 153.19 ± 6.98 cm, and average weight 58.95 ± ...

In 2008, Stodden and colleagues took a unique developmental approach toward addressing the potential role of motor competence in promoting positive or negative trajectories of physical activity, health-related fitness, and weight status. The conceptual model proposed synergistic relationships among physical activity, motor competence, perceived motor competence, health-related physical fitness,...