Daily assessment of physical activity in 6–11-year-old children

Abstract

The purpose is to study the volume of motor activity and the intensity of physical activity of children aged 6-11 years during their daily regime, to identify existing problems of motor activity at this age and compare the results with age norms. Research materials.The study involved children aged 6-11 years in the city of Belgorod (n=186, 94-girls, 92-boys). More than 250 research papers were analyzed, including those indexed in the Scopus database and the Web of Science. In these works, the issues of optimizing the motor activity of 6-11 years olds were touched upon. Research methods: studying and analyzing scientific papers on the problem under study by home and foreign scientists; pedometer, heart rate monitoring, timekeeping, statistical processing of the results obtained. Results. The average daily rate of motor activity in boys is 7310.87±301.55 steps per day, and in girls it is 6069.26±472.45 steps per day. The intensity of daily loads in most children corresponds mainly to low-and medium-intensity modes (increasing the heart rate to 110-140 beats per minute). During the week, high and high intensity loads were observed in 7.2 % of girls and 23.8%of boys. Conclusions.None of the examined children aged 6-11 years reaches the optimal level of motor activity. Analysis of the dynamics of motor activity and their comparison with the age norm indicates that the number of steps performed by younger students who participated in our study is significantly behind the norm. The biological need for movement is met by 43.4% in girls and 52.2% in boys. The results of heart rate monitoring indicate that physical activity corresponds mainly to low-and medium-intensity regimes for children of this age. At the same time, physical activity of high and maximum intensity was observed in 7.2% of girls, and in 23.8% of boys episodically. While in school, the average number of locomotion’s for both boys and girls is lower than in the afternoon. Physical activity of 6-11 years of age in the day mode does not have a developing and training effect in physical education lessons and sports, as well as in independent motor activity. We believe that the problem of the volume and intensity of physical activity at this age stage requires additional in-depth study with a large sample size and duration.