In adults, exercise is a powerful and natural stimulator of immune cells and adhesion molecules. Far less is known about these exercise responses during childhood and whether or not exercise in real-life activities of healthy children might in¯uence immune responses. We compared laboratory exercise (10´2 min periods of heavy, constant intensity, cycle ergometer exercise with 1 min rests between exercise in nine subjects, aged 9±15 years) with ®eld exercise (90 min soccer practice in nine di erent subjects, aged 9±11 years). Blood was sampled before both protocols, 5 min after the 30 min laboratory protocol, and 10±15 min after the 90 min ®eld protocol. Both ®eld and laboratory exercise protocols led to signi®cant (P<0.05) increases in granulocytes, monocytes, and all lymphocyte subpopulations. The mean (SEM) increases were similar for the two protocols except for the signi®cantly greater increase in laboratory compared with ®eld protocols for natural killer cells [142 (39)% vs 12 (16) (25)%] protocol. Finally, the density of CD62L on lymphocytes signi®cantly decreased with laboratory exercise but showed no change in the ®eld protocol [±20 (3)% vs ±3 (3)%, P<0.001]. The rapid and substantial immune response in both laboratory and ®eld protocols suggests that exercise stimulation of the immune system occurs commonly in the real lives of children and may play a role in their overall immune status.