Search results for "Fit"

A school-based quasi-experimental intervention to improve students' motor competence and physical fitness

2022

Background Previous research has shown that school can be an influential context to promote students' physical activity engagement, physical fitness, and motor competence. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a 5-month-long intervention program that aimed to increase students' motor competence and physical fitness during school days. Methods A quasi-experimental intervention design with pre- and post-tests was implemented. Altogether 325 Finnish Grade 5 (Mage = 11.26, SD = .33) students from five schools participated in the study. At the beginning of the study, students were divided into experimental and control groups on purpose. The intervention consisted of t…

Is Cardiorespiratory Optimal Point Measured During the Maximal Cardiopulmonary Exercise Test a Relevant Indicator of Sports Performance?

2018

Motives for competitive sports participation in masters track and field athletes : Impact of sociodemographic factors and competitive background

2022

Objectives Masters athletes due to their lifelong engagement in sport represent a unique group to study motivation for regular physical activity, but there is less scientific data on the sport motives in masters athletes. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the association of age, sex, education, nationality, competitive background and training amount with sport motives of masters track and field athletes. Methods 811 (254 women) athletes aged 35–89 years participated in European Veterans Athletics Championships in the year of 2000. Sport motives were assessed with a questionnaire and categorized into1) well-being, 2) competitive and performance 3) health and fitness motives. R…

Physical fitness and anthropometrics in Finnish soldiers during their early career: prospective changes during a 3-year follow-up.

2020

IntroductionPhysical fitness is a fundamental capability required of military personnel, but studies focusing on longitudinal changes in physical fitness and anthropometrics in soldiers are lacking. The aim was to evaluate physical fitness and anthropometrics in soldiers during their early career.MethodsA 3-year prospective study included 180 male soldiers (baseline age 26±2 years) with measures of a 12 min running test, standing long jump, sit-up and push-up tests, and body mass, height and waist circumference (WC). Baseline data were stratified into tertiles, and the changes within each tertile were analysed using dependent t-tests and analysis of variance.Results12 min running test dista…

Effects of Task-Specific and Strength Training on Simulated Military Task Performance in Soldiers.

2020

A soldier’s occupational physical task requirements are diverse and varied. However, the type of physical training that most effectively improves soldiers’ occupational task requirements has not been studied previously. The purpose of this study was to determine the important strength characteristics for soldiers during a repeated simulated military task course, and the type of training that may be effective to improve these abilities during a specialized military training period. Forty-two (n = 42) soldiers participated in the study. They were divided into three training groups; a soldier task-specific training group (TSG, n = 17), a strength training group (STG, n = 15), and a control gro…

Performance-related physiological changes induced by one year of endurance training in young athletes

2023

IntroductionAlthough maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) is generally recognized as the single best indicator of aerobic fitness in youth, interpretation of this parameter and the extent to which it can be improved by training remain controversial, as does the relative importance of VO2max for performance in comparison to other factors such as power production. Here, we examined the influence of endurance training on the VO2max, muscle power and sports-related performance of cross-country skiers attending a school specializing in sports, as well as potential relationships between any changes observed to one another and/or to perceived stress scale (Cohen) and certain blood parameters.MethodsOn t…

The Graffiti Storyline and Urban Planning : Key Narratives in the Planning, Marketing, and News Texts of Santalahti and Hiedanranta

2018

This article regards urban planning as a form of storytelling and argues that there is significance in whose stories and which storylines are acknowledged to belong to the narrative fabric of a place and how the stories of future districts are communicated to the public through narratives during a planning project. My focus is on the storyline that follows the activity of graffiti culture in the two case areas of Santalahti and Hiedanranta (located in the city of Tampere in Finland) during these areas’ phases of transition created during the redevelopment of former industrial areas into residential districts. In my discursive analysis I identify key narratives that recur in planning, market…

Association between resting blood pressure and maximal blood pressure response to exercise and arterial health

2022

We investigated the longitudinal associations of blood pressure, cardiorespiratory fitness, and arterial stiffness among children. Arterial stiffening has been repeatedly shown to be a cardiovascular mortality predictor and can be observed early in childhood. As such, it is crucial to understand whether a child’s blood pressure, fitness level, and body composition can predict early signs of atherosclerosis and arterial stiffening. The current study examined the relationship between blood pressure, cardiorespiratory fitness, and arterial stiffness over time in children, using data from the Physical and Nutrition in Children (PANIC) Study. It is a physical and dietary intervention study condu…

Simultaneous optimization of harvest schedule and measurement strategy

2013

In many recent studies, the value of forest inventory information in the harvest scheduling has been examined. Usually only the profitability of measuring simultaneously all the stands in the area is examined. Yet, it may be more profitable to concentrate the measurement efforts to some subset of them. In this paper, the authors demonstrate that stochastic optimization can be used for defining the optimal measurement strategy simultaneously with the harvest decisions. The results show that without end-inventory constraints, it was most profitable to measure the stands that were just below the medium age. Measuring the oldest stands was not profitable at all. It turned out to be profitable t…

Generalizability and Simplicity as Criteria in Feature Selection: Application to Mood Classification in Music

2011

Classification of musical audio signals according to expressed mood or emotion has evident applications to content-based music retrieval in large databases. Wrapper selection is a dimension reduction method that has been proposed for improving classification performance. However, the technique is prone to lead to overfitting of the training data, which decreases the generalizability of the obtained results. We claim that previous attempts to apply wrapper selection in the field of music information retrieval (MIR) have led to disputable conclusions about the used methods due to inadequate analysis frameworks, indicative of overfitting, and biased results. This paper presents a framework bas…