Developing endurance among children in preschool period

Abstract

Introduction: Prior research generally confirms the importance of endurance exercises in preschool period and suggests shorter and less intensive exercises. However, little research has been conducted to show and evaluate different types for developing endurance in preschool period. Our research aims to find out which type of exercise is more suitable for developing endurance for a preschool age child compared to an adult, taking into account developmental characteristics.
 Material and methods: A total of 69 preschool children (40 children aged 3 years and 29 children aged 5 years) were included in the study. We measured their heart rates during two types of endurance exercises (uninterrupted walking vs “method of game”). We compared the average heart rate and the actual frequency curves.
 Results: Endurance exercise according to the “method of game” allows the child to adjust the effort more individually compared to uninterrupted walking when both exercises are performed with a group of pre-school children. A comparison of heart rate curves showed that when children partook in the “ method of game”, they achieved different heart rate values at the same time. A further analysis of heart rate with 5 selected “time stamps” between the two exercises showed that children achieved statistically significant higher heart rates when performing the “method of game” (1’: Z = 2.20; p = 0.028, r = 0.19; 3 ‘: Z = 4.64; p = 0.00, r = 0.39; 5’: Z = 3.23; p = 0.001, r = 0.27; 8’: Z = 3.82 p = 0.00, r = 0.32; 13 ‘: Z = 3.33; p = 0.001, r = 0.28). The comparison of the mean heart rate values over the entire 13-minute time interval between the execution of the “method of game” (M = 143, SD = 14) and uninterrupted walking (M = 132, SD = 9) was statistically significantly higher in favour of the “method of game” (Wilcox test: Z = 5.83, p = 0.00, r = 0.24). The Mann-Whitney-Test showed that 3-year-old children achieved statistically significantly higher average heart rate during the “method of game” (Z = -2.34 p = 0.020, η² = 0.08) as well as during uninterrupted walking (Z = 3.17 p = 0.002, η² = 0.15). No statistically significant differences between boys and girls were confirmed.
 Conclusions: Based on the results obtained, we believe that endurance exercise according to the “method of game” is more suitable for a developing preschool child than uninterrupted walking. The “method of game” also allows the simultaneous implementation of endurance exercise in heterogeneous groups, since the children adapt to the effort themselves, regardless of age. We believe that other types of endurance exercises should be researched and all age groups of preschool children should be included in the research.