Human Anatomy Unit, Department of Public Health, Experimental and Forensic Medicine, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
PeerJ. 2023 Apr 21;11:e15271. doi: 10.7717/peerj.15271. eCollection 2023.
Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is a powerful marker of cardiovascular health, especially in youth. Several field tests can provide accurate measurement of CRF, the Cooper Run Test (CRT) is generally preferred by physical education (PE) teachers and trainers. The CRT performance in adolescents has been compared to reference distance values, gender and age but the differences among the anthropometric characteristics of youth has not been evaluated. For these reasons, the aim of this study was to develop reference standards for CRT and evaluate possible correlations between biometric measurements and athletic performance.
This cross-sectional study involved a total of 9,477 children (4,615 girls) aged 11-14 years, freely recruited from North Italian middle schools. Mass, height and CRT performances were assessed in the morning during PE classes as scheduled (mornings-Monday to Friday). The anthropometric measures were collected at least 20 min before the CRT run test.
We found a better CRT result in boys ( < 0.001), however a smaller SD in girls suggested a more homogeneous aerobic performance for girls (., 371.12 m 282.00 m). In addition, the Shapiro-Wilk test showed a low -value ( < 0.001) but the effect size (0.031 for boys and 0.022 for girls) was small enough that the correction on this parameter allows a practical assumption of normality for the distributions. A visual homoskedastic distribution in both sexes is evident for both body mass index (BMI), mass and VO peak with respect to CRT results. In addition, there were low linear correlation coefficients for both BMI, mass and VO peak compared to the CRT results, with a R2 < 0.5 for every covariate. The only visual heteroskedastic distribution was observed in regression between distance in CRT and age at peak high velocity.
Our findings suggested that anthropometric characteristics are not powerful markers to predict Cooper Run Test results in a well-mixed, unpolarized and unbiased pool of middle school boys and girls. PE teachers and trainers should prefer endurance tests over the use of indirect formulas to predict performance.
心肺适能（CRF）是心血管健康的有力指标，尤其是在年轻人中。有几种现场测试可以准确测量 CRF，库珀跑步测试（CRT）通常受到体育教育（PE）教师和教练的喜爱。青少年的 CRT 表现已经与参考距离值、性别和年龄进行了比较，但尚未评估年轻人的人体测量特征之间的差异。出于这些原因，本研究旨在制定 CRT 的参考标准，并评估生物测量与运动表现之间的可能相关性。
这项横断面研究共涉及 9477 名 11-14 岁的儿童（4615 名女孩），他们是从意大利北部的中学自由招募的。在体育课程的上午（周一至周五的上午）按计划进行体重、身高和 CRT 表现的评估。在 CRT 跑步测试前至少 20 分钟收集人体测量数据。
我们发现男孩的 CRT 成绩更好（<0.001），但女孩的 SD 较小表明女孩的有氧运动表现更为一致（男孩为 371.12 m±282.00 m，女孩为 363.66 m±262.00 m）。此外，Shapiro-Wilk 检验显示低值（<0.001），但效应量（男孩为 0.031，女孩为 0.022）足够小，以至于该参数的校正允许对分布的正态性进行实际假设。在男孩和女孩中，身体质量指数（BMI）、体重和 VO 峰值与 CRT 结果的分布均表现出明显的同方差。此外，BMI、体重和 VO 峰值与 CRT 结果的线性相关系数均较低，每个协变量的 R2<0.5。仅在 CRT 与峰值高速度时的年龄之间的回归中观察到异方差分布。
我们的研究结果表明，在一个混合、非极化和无偏见的中学男生和女生群体中，人体测量特征不是预测库珀跑步测试结果的有力指标。体育教师和教练应该更喜欢耐力测试，而不是使用间接公式来预测表现。
