Health-Related Physical Fitness of Rural and Urban Boys in Relation to the Criterion-Referenced Standards

Abstract

1791 Health fitness standards, based on public research, indicate a fitness range which a person should fall in order to maintain a level of health that will help to prevent degenerative diseases, now and in later life. Sedentary lifestyle is related to the development of hipokinetics diseases. Lifestyle can be influenced by the environment, such as, urban and rural areas. The latency period of the degenerative diseases at least to early adulthood, and likely into childhood. PURPOSE: to analyze the healthrelated physical fitness (body composition – BC; flexibility – FLX; muscular strength/endurance – MSE; aerobic endurance – AE) of rural and urban boys in relation to the criterion-referenced standards for desirable health-related physical fitness (HRPF) established by the AAHPERD (1988). METHODS: the sample was composed by 268 rural and 435 urban boys (10.50 to 17.49 yrs old) who lived in four counties, from two states in the South of Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina), where most of the population is descendant from Italian, German and Polish. The rural area is characterized by small pieces of land (less than 51 hectares), with very few or inexistent mechanization, due to unfavorable land topography. HRPF were measured according to the AAHPERD (1988) and were analyzed by descriptive statistics. RESULTS: percent of the rural and urban boys, respectively, who met the criterionreferenced standards were: BC = 69.2 and 53.1; FLX = 66.8 and 56.3; MSE = 28.3 and 22.5; AE = 89.0 and 43.7. Considering all HRPF components, only 13.0 percent of all rural boys and 7.0 percent of all urban boys met the criterion-referenced standards. CONCLUSION: an small portion of the rural and urban boys have desirable HRPF. Otherwise, if considered AE only 13 percent of the rural boys may be affected by any degenerative disease now and in later life, while more than half (56 percent) of the urban boys would have an elevated risk to develop degenerative diseases related to AE. The differences in AE level could be related to the differences in lifestyle between urban and rural population.