Time-course of balance training-related changes on static and dynamic balance performance in healthy children

Abstract

Objective In healthy children, there is evidence of improvements in static and dynamic balance performance following balance training. However, the time-course of balance training-related changes is unknown. Thus, we determined the effects of balance training after one, three, and six weeks of exercise on measures of static and dynamic balance in healthy children (N = 44, 20 females, mean age: 9.6 ± 0.5 years, age range: 9–11 years). Results Participants in the intervention group (2 × 25 min balance exercises per week) compared to those in the control group (2 × 25 min track and field exercises and soccer practice per week) significantly improved their static (i.e., by measuring stance time in the One-Legged Stance test) and dynamic (i.e., by counting step number in the 3-m Beam Walking Backward test) balance performance. Late effects (after 6 weeks) occurred most frequently followed by mid-term effects (after 3 weeks) and then early effects (after 1 week). These findings imply that balance training is effective to improve static and dynamic measures of balance in healthy children, whereby the effectiveness increases with increasing training period. Trial registration Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN16518737 (retrospectively registered at 24th August, 2023).

Effect of low versus high balance training complexity on balance performance in male adolescents

“…Previous research [ 17 ] has reported medium- to large-sized effect sizes that were used for sample size estimation. Precisely, a G*power analysis (effect size f = 0.25, α error probability = 0.05, 1-β error probability = 0.80, correlations among repeated measures r = 0.40, 2 groups, 2 assessments, drop-out rate of 10% due to reasons not attributable to treatment) revealed that a total sample size of N = 40 participants (i.e., n = 20 per group) would be sufficient to detect significant treatment effects [ 18 ].…”