Lithuanian children and teenagers are weaker and larger than their parents when they were schoolchildren

“Today’s children are weaker and larger than their parents were when they were schoolchildren. This will undoubtedly have a negative impact on their health in the future,” said Lithuanian Sports University (LSU) professor Arūnas Emeljanovas, who, together with fellow scientists, has been conducting research on changes in the physical capacity and body composition of Lithuanian children and adolescents for the past thirty years.

A unique study by LSU researchers A. Emeljanov, Brigita Miežienė, Tomas Venckūnas and Australian Grant Tomkinson showed that many aspects of the physical capacity of schoolchildren aged 11-18 (aerobic capacity, muscle strength and endurance, etc.) from 1992 to 2022. got worse.

Negative trends were noticed already in 2002, but in 2012 an ominous deterioration of the results was recorded. However, over the past decade (up to 2022), performance in physical performance has declined less. In addition, the body mass index (BMI) of both girls and boys increased over 30 years.

“The most serious problem is the continued deterioration of the aerobic endurance test (20-meter shuttle run), which reflects the state of the cardiorespiratory system.” Low endurance is thought to be a greater risk factor for mortality than obesity, smoking and diabetes. Worrying are the worse results of tests of muscle strength (long jump from a place) and muscle endurance (hanging), said LSU professor A. Emeljanovas.

Negative changes in physical capacity are most likely caused by environmental, social, behavioral, physical, psychosocial, physiological factors. However, the most “popular” ones are increases in BMI and decreases in physical activity.

“If the path to these negative factors is not prevented, health disorders that appear earlier and earlier will pose an increasing threat to people’s well-being, and will become a serious financial burden for the state and society,” warned LSU professor A. Emeljanovas.

According to researchers, physical fitness has a huge impact on the harmonious growth and development of a child, and low physical fitness increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and mortality.

Thus, the causes of disease and mortality in middle age must be sought in childhood, when muscle strength and health-promoting skills are not developed sufficiently.

In order for the physical capacity of children and adolescents to improve in Lithuania, it would be useful to increase the number of physical education lessons, ensuring their quality, to improve the availability of informal physical education (sports) for children and adolescents (especially in the periphery), to implement a system for long-term monitoring of schoolchildren’s physical activity and physical capacity, and to allocate more attention to the development of physical activity infrastructure.

LSU inf.