BMI or Physical Fitness: What Matters Most for Children's Health? A Case for Apulia

Abstract

The present study aims to evaluate the validity of a model based on BMI and the components of physical fitness to classify children into groupsof low-medium-high levels of physical efficiency and health, in a sample of 500 children aged 8–13 years (female = 262, male = 238). After collecting anthropometric data, the assessment of physical fitness has been carried out with SLJ, 10x4 and 6MWT. Children were then assigned to low, medium, and high physical fitness categories a priori based on their BMI-for-age Z-scores. The discriminatory analysis showed that only 71.3% of cases were correctly classified into physical fitness categories: the most discriminating variable to assign children to one group rather than another is not the BMI (p=0,225) but the 6MWT (p<0,01), as an indicator of cardiorespiratory fitness. This study provides new insights about the fundamental role in developing physical fitness during childhood.

DOI: 10.5671/ca.48.3.6