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This research aims to understand the influence of bodily practices, especially gymnastics, in the construction of representations of a healthy body conveyed in a Brazilian women’s magazine in the 1940s and 1950s. We use records from the Jornal das Moças magazine for the analysis based on the theoretical and methodological assumptions of cultural history. The results show that gymnastics for women was linked to body maintenance and used as a tool for establishing a body standard, thus disciplining and shapingthe construction of women’s health concepts, determined by the aesthetic bias of that period: a slim body as an ideal standard of beauty and health.

The aim of the study was to verify the effects of the summer vacation period on the health-related physical fitness (HRPF) of students in the 7th and 8th grades of elementary school. The study design is characterized as observational, considered short-term longitudinal. Physical evaluations were carried out before and after the summer school vacation period. The components of physical fitness analyzed were: Cardiorespiratory fitness - 6-minute running or walking test, body composition- measures of body mass index, waist circumference and waist-to-height ratio, muscle strength/endurance - abdominal endurance test (sit -up) and flexibility - test of sitting and reaching. As a statistical analysis, the paired t-test was used, adopting p≤0.05. A significant increase was observed in the body mass index, waist circumference, waist-to-height ratio and flexibility after the vacation period. However, there were no significant changes in cardiorespiratory fitness and muscle strength/endurance. Furthermore, analyzing boys and girls separately, no differences were found for waist-to-height ratio and only girls showed improvements in muscle strength/endurance. It was concluded that the vacation exposure factor improved the levels of flexibility and increased the variables of body composition, not generating significant changes in cardiorespiratory fitness, while muscle strength/endurance improved only in girls.

The aim of the present study is to understand the constitution of kinanthropometry as scientific disciplinary field in the 1970s in Brazil. Therefore, a bibliographic review was carried out in nine databases and in a specific journal focused on publications from the Kinanthopometry perspective, since this is an element to legitimize a scientific discipline. Only two studies dealing with this topic were selected. Given such a gap in the literature, three interviews with professors who organized the Physical Education (PE) course laboratories, as well as a newspaper report from the period, were used in the study. Different names have been associated with the scientific field of human composition assessment throughout history, as well as formulating different body perceptions, such as Biometrics, Anthropometry and kinanthropometry. Each of these factors determine relationships with the involved socio-cultural context. Such a complexity to understand a conjecture within a historical time expands the space available for analyses. In the 1960s, the term kinanthropometry emerged in foreign countries as a new way of interpreting human body composition assessments linked to knowledge in the PE field based on movement and anatomy. This term was imported by Brazilian researchers after their contact with scientists in USA and Canada, since it offered the possibility of acquiring new representations for research in the PE field back in the 1970s.