Abstract
Objective: To cope with the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic health authorities released social restrictions. Such social restrictions impacted on the people's possibilities to move deliberately in a public space and to gather with other people. In the present study, we investigated the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions (“confinement”) on physical activity (PA) patterns before and during the confinement among team sports participants. Such PA patterns were further related to current mood states, and possible sex differences were also explored.Methods: A total of 476 adults exercising team sport (football, futsal, volleyball, handball, and basketball; mean age: 24.66 years; 48.1% females) completed a series of self-rating questionnaires covering sociodemographic information, former and current PA patterns, and current mood states.Results: Compared with the period before the confinement, PA intensity decreased, but PA frequency increased during the confinement. Past, current, and changes in physical activity patterns were unrelated to participants' mood states. Sex differences in mood were spurious. Sex differences in physical activity patterns were modest, with male participants reporting a higher physical activity intensity during the confinement.Conclusions: The present pattern of results suggests that the COVID-19-related confinement did not impact in a uniform fashion on PA patterns of adults attending team sports. Furthermore, mood states were unrelated to current physical activity patterns. Given the complex psychosocial situation of COVID-19-related confinement, it appeared very unlikely that sole physical activity patterns could counterbalance possible impaired states of mood and behavior.
Highlights
By the end of June 2020, the emergence of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused over 8.5 million cases and 456,973 deaths worldwide
We explored if and to what extend current physical activity patterns under the context of confinement changed compared with the period prior to the confinement: This exploratory question is justified as follows: While some findings showed a decrease in physical activity levels (Ammar et al, 2020; Caputo and Reichert, 2020; Zhang et al, 2020), others did not (Constandt et al, 2020; Lesser and Nienhuis, 2020; Tornese et al, 2020)
The key findings of the present study were that among a larger sample of Iranian adults attending team sports activities before and during the COVID-19-related confinement physical activity intensity decreased, but physical activity frequency increased in the male participants and remained stable among the female participants
Summary
By the end of June 2020, the emergence of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused over 8.5 million cases and 456,973 deaths worldwide. 200,262 cases and 9,392 deaths have been recorded in Iran by the end of June (World Health Organization, 2020). The virus with its epidemic danger forced health care authorities to act. To decrease the risk of spreading further the virus and to cause further deaths and severely infected people, health authorities imposed confinements. To this end, health authorities legislated temporarily to close borders, schools, universities, cultural and sports events, and to disallow gatherings in open spaces. Moving in an open space (e.g., going to work, health care, grocery shopping, and exercising) was associated with rigorously following rules such as social distancing, avoiding direct contact with other people and objects, wearing masks and disposable gloves, and regular hand disinfection to avoid infection, quarantine in case of doubts to be infected, and isolation in case of approved infection
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