A conceptual physical education course and college freshmen’s health-related fitness

Abstract

Purpose Conceptual physical education (CPE) classes have been widely offered to promote a healthy lifestyle in higher education settings. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of a CPE course on health-related fitness (HRF) levels among college freshmen. Design/methodology/approach A pre- and post-test research design was used. In total, 50 freshmen in a US university were enrolled in a 13-week CPE course. Their HRF levels were assessed by the Fitnessgram at the beginning and the end of the course. Findings Students significantly enhanced their aerobic capacity, upper-body muscle strength and endurance, abdominal muscle strength and endurance, and decreased body fat percentage. No significant improvement in flexibility was found among the total sample. However, non-kinesiology students significantly enhanced their flexibility while the opposite trend was found among kinesiology students. Female students reduced more body fat percentage, while male students increased their aerobic capacity more rapidly than their female counterparts. Practical implications The CPE course could yield significant improvement in HRF among freshmen, regardless of sex or major. Universities may consider offering CPE courses for all students and mandate such courses as a degree requirement. Originality/value This empirical study investigated HRF level changes that occurred after a CPE course intervention among college freshmen. Sex and major difference in HRF changes were revealed. The interventions included in the CPE course could help improve freshmen's HRF levels in future intervention programs in a similar setting.

The effect of three sport games in physical education on the health-related fitness of male university students

“…The results show that there is a significant improvement in the healthrelated fitness of students who took the PE course. This agrees with studies done on school children [17,[29][30][31][32] and university students [33][34][35][36][37]. Moreover, the current study shows evidence that the benefits of recreational football [38,39] can be obtained to a certain degree in a classroom setting.…”

“…Nevertheless, there was a difference between this study and the study by Liu et al [33]. They pointed out that flexibility did not significantly improve after their PE program.…”

Research on College Physical Education and Sports Training Based on Virtual Reality Technology

“…ese joint position data will be used as initial data. After obtaining the preliminary test data and reducing the noise, the data should be processed to filter unnecessary noise and improve the accuracy of data recognition [12]. e common position noise filter passed by the tracking function is based on the time series data and the bone tissue data of 30 data frames between each frame of data collection, with a time interval of 30 mm.…”

Comparison of Polar Active Watch and Waist- and Wrist-Worn ActiGraph Accelerometers for Measuring Children’s Physical Activity Levels during Unstructured Afterschool Programs

“…According to its brochure, the PAW is designed for the children in compliance with the required standards of the Consumer Product Safety Information Acyl/Children’s Product. The PAW is not primarily intended for research purposes; however, the unique ‘group solution’ features that allow end-users to manage and monitor multiple devices at the same time and graphically display the PA data via its companion web and mobile applications have been well adopted by researchers [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ]. In particular, a recent study that examined the feasibility of PAW for the assessment of PA in children in free-living settings reported that the PAW was better accepted by children compared to other research-grade monitors, owing to its comfortable, waterproof watch-style design and digital display features [ 31 ], which are known to be associated with higher compliance levels in this population group [ 32 ].…”