© Borgis - New Medicine 2/2006, s. 35-38
Monika Radzimirska-Graczyk, Wojciech Chalcarz
Development of children and school youth and sports activity
Department of Food and Nutrition, University School of Psychical Education, Poznań, Poland
Head of Department: Prof. Wojciech Chalcarz, MD, PhD
Summary
Summary
The aim of the paper was to present and discuss the bibliographical data concerning the development of children and school youth as well as accident rate and the incidence of traumas in sport.
It is advisable to perform systematic and interdisciplinary research on the children and youth engaged in sports activities. Thanks to the above-mentioned research it will be possible to coach them in such a way to provide their optimum physical, mental and intellectual development and protect them against sports traumas and contusions.
Introduction
To achieve success in contemporary sport it is necessary to start doing it as early as in the childhood. In order to make training easier for this group of children and youth both in Poland and worlwide sports classes and schools have been established.
Although, there is a scarcity of papers showing the entire impact of sports activities on the school children and youth. The papers published so far focus only on the development of school children and youth [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], their diet [3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12], nutrition state [3, 10], accident rate and the incidence of traumas in sport and how to prevent them [9, 13, 14].
The aim of this paper was to present and discuss the bibliographical data concerning the development of children and school youth as well as accident rate and the incidence of traumas in sport.
School age characteristics
The school age according to Woynarowska [15] is divided into three subperiods, namely younger school age from 7 to the age of 10-12 i.e. till the first signs of sexual maturation, puberty period also called adolescence i.e. on average from the age of 10 to 15 in the case of girls and from 12 to 17 in the case of boys, and the juvenile period lasting till the age of about 18 in girls, whereas in boys ranges from 20 to 22, i.e. a few years after the reaching sexual maturation. [1, 6, 15].
The younger school age features a slower growth rate. About the age of 10 child´s brain achieves its final size. In a part of children at the age of 7-8 occurs a higher growth rate, i.e. the so-called ”school growth spurt” or ”pre-pubertal spurt” . In this period the average height and body weight in girls is lower than in boys whose muscle weight is also higher [5, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19].
The sexual maturation period features the most intense growth rate beyond the infancy period and it is called pubertal spurt. The pubertal spurt in girls begins about the age of 10 with the peak at the age of 12, usually one year before the first menstruation, whereas in boys about the age of 12.3 with the peak at the age of 14. As a result of these changes the body acquires typical features, respectively, feminine or masculine. The most typical feature for this period is the large population differentiation, e.g. the differences in body height can exceed 20 cm [1, 5, 6, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20].
The juvenile period in girls ends at about the age of 15, whereas in boys it is considerably longer. In this period girls tend to accumulate fat tissue and their body weight grows, whereas in boys there is a considerable skeletal system growth that lasts till the age of 25 and their weight grows mainly as a result of growth in muscle weight 6, 15, 21].
At all school ages being assessed we observe very complex processes of maturation and development of reproductive system. The processes are also accompanied by social and mental development. [4, 20, 22]. At the same time, there are some changes in fitness and physical activity of the children and youth [22, 23, 24]. Both fitness and their physical activity activity is little, that is why we should do our best to provide modern curricula for physical education classes at school as well as active rest and health promoting behaviours outside school. [2, 22, 24, 25].
We observe a considerable difference in puberty period occurrence and the rate of changes involved, which results in losing the importance of calendar age and using the Tanner scale to define the level of puberty in children [26, 27].
The level and rate of growth in children and youth at school age depends much on environmental/economic factors [6, 20, 23, 24]. The inequalities in the development of Polish children and youth have occurred for years and consist among others in the fact that mean body height is lower and the age of first menstruation is later, the less educated and professionally qualified are the parents, the higher number of children in the family, smaller the town they live in and their financial potential is worse or father is older [15].
The process of biological development acceleration, called development acceleration differs much. The biggest differences have been found between the development of children and youth in large urban centers as compared with rural areas of North-East Poland and the submountain region. The difference in the body size of children and youth from large urban areas is insignificant [24]. Irrespectively of region, we can see a systematic growth in the body height and weight in children and youth as compared with the generation of children of the same age observed several years ago, i.e. the so-called secular trend [15, 20, 21, 24, 28].
The impact of sports on the development and health of children and school youth
While reviewing the currently available literature it can be found that a moderate physical activity has a beneficial effect on child´s development, as it protects it against obesity, hypertension and osteoporosis at older age [29]. The lack of physical activity contributes to occurring the defects and dysfunctions of the motion organs. In addition, the sports activity of children and youth shapes their emotional life and develops their interests [30, 31, 32].
However, it should be kept in mind that any excessive load makes a competition for the needs of growing body [33, 34], being especially disadvantageous when using long-term maximum loads or with ill-planned rest or lack of full post-exercise biological renewal. The basic problem here is to select an individual training [10, 15, 23, 32, 33, 35, 36].
A child´s organism adapts to long-term exercise in a similar way as adults´, though in children the homeostasis disorders are lower. Children are fairly good at tolerating short-term intense physical efforts, where the phosphagen mechanism applies, whereas they are much worse than adults at obtaining energy in non-oxygen glycolysis. The oxygen efforts lasting up to 5 minutes are tolerated in the same way as in adults. Unfortunately, the effort economy in children is worse, which results from increased by 1/3 oxygen consumption as compared with adults [23, 32].
Any sports training, especially aiming at acquiring strength involves a lot of adaptive organism changes. It is known that human physical fitness increases dynamically at the first and second life decade, after which it begins to go down. The real image changes in aerobic efficiency in children and youth engaged in sports activities can be followed based on relative values of VO2 max [23]. The endurance training results in better functioning of the respiratory and cardiovascular system [23, 32].
The physical activity of children and youth facilitates them to keep proper body weight because researchers have found a clear connection of juvenile obesity with the time spent on watching TV as well as with the fact that obese children are less physically active that their peers with proper body weight [7].
Any unbalanced (unilateral) training selectively loads some parts of the body and can result in disproportions in development and functioning of particular human body systems. For example, any repeating microtraumas to bone growth zones can affect their growth. The phenomenon intensifies while training becomes too intense and when nutrition is improper [37].
In some sports disciplines children and youth have to maintain a constant body weight and sometimes even lower its value, which is extremely disadvantageous to their development [2, 10, 38, 39]. There may be some problems with proper skeleton shaping and the lack or brakes in menstruation [33, 40, 41].
Because of the considerable impact of training and sports effort on the development of child´s organism, it is necessary to find criteria for selecting children to particular sport disciplines [42], and optimum training rules for children and youth [10, 36, 43] as well as to constantly monitor any stress signals, both of emotional, mental or physical character [37].
Accidents and traumas in sport
Any kind of human physical activity can involve a risk [13, 44, 45, 46]. The most frequently occurring health problems connected with physical activity are damages to the organs of motion, especially when the body is properly prepared for this. In the maturation period bones are susceptible to fractures, because there are still cartilages in the bone growth plates [2, 47]. The ones who are especially exposed to contusions and traumas are young sportsmen who deal with full contact disciplines and combat sports, the traumas include mainly knees and ankles [48].
Some serious threats such as myocardial infarction or sudden death are rare and usually refer to older sportsmen or persons subject to heavy exercises they are not prepared for [49, 50, 51].
Sportsmen usually experience the so-called overtraining syndrome i.e. the state of unbalance between recovery processes and training or contest loads applied. It can be also defined as a training and contest excess at deficiency of rest [52]. The symptoms of overtrainng are as follows: long-term decrease in sports efficiency, constant sense of exhaustion, sleep and mood disorders, increased susceptibility to infections and reproductive function disorders [53, 54]. When the sportsman is overtrained he is more susceptible to contusions and any kind of sports traumas.
The record-seeking sportsmen are more frequently exposed to contusions and traumas than persons doing recreational sports activities. [45].
In the case of children and youth too intense training can lead to pathology [30, 55, 56, 57]. In the children who train 20 hours a week various cardiovascular [31] and osteoarticular disorders have been observed [14, 58, 59].The most frequent reason for traumas were contusions and falls [47]. In young dancers scientists have found fractures and cracks in metatarsal and toe bones causing very strong pain [41].
It should be kept in mind that all health problems can reveal much later [44]. In addition, any excessive training load can disturb the developmental processes in children. The overtrained youth can be frail, shorter, lighter and worse intellectually developed and retarded in maturation process than their "unloaded” friends [31, 40, 57]. In the case of girls the first menstruation can be delayed [31, 60, 61, 62]. Although, it is advantageous that stress connected with sports activity is less frequent in children than in grown-up sportsmen [63].
The above-mentioned examples refer only to excessive load to children and young people with sports training exceeding 20 hours a week and defined as health threatening [31]. To make the sports activity safe, it should take into account the individual potential of sportsmen and adjust the trainings accordingly to extend the limits of their physical effort endurance [10, 53].
Conclusions
It is recommended to perform systematic, interdisciplinary research on the children and youth engaged in sports activity. Thanks to the above-mentioned research it will be possible to coach them in such a way to provide their optimum physical, mental and intellectual development and protect them against sports traumas and contusions.
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