Kettlebell-classroom Training

University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland92 enrolled

Overview

Physical fitness is a crucial health marker, predicting both cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. Muscular strength, an essential component of physical fitness, underpins physical and psychological well-being, particularly from childhood. Increasing sedentary behavior has led to rising obesity and cardiovascular disease rates in children, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of pediatric dynapenia. Muscular fitness positively affects body composition, bone health, psychological health, and academic performance, and is necessary for fundamental motor skills. In Basel, a ten-year trend shows declining physical fitness and rising obesity among primary school children, especially those from lower socio-economic backgrounds with less access to sports. This presents an opportunity to promote physical activity in schools. The "Kettlebell Classroom" project aims to introduce daily, playful resistance training with kettlebells over seven weeks in various schools, focusing on culturally and socially less integrated children. Evidence supports the benefits of resistance training (RT) for children, including increased joint stability, improved motor skills, reduced injury risks, and increased spontaneous physical activity. Despite WHO recommendations for muscle and bone-strengthening activities three times a week, these guidelines are often unmet. This project aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of short, intensive exercise sessions for children, with the goal of expanding the initiative across Basel to improve health outcomes for all children.

Study intervention The intervention emphasizes full-body exercises which are performed with the own body weight and kettlebells. On every weekday, the intervention classes will receive 15 min of supervised training over 7 weeks. This results in a total number of training sessions of 35 sessions. The movements and exercises in all phases are based on functional, multi-joint movements. The focus will be on age-appropriate whole-body strength and motor skill development. It will be designed with different, varying exercises, which can be individually tailored and adapted to the children's ability. Tailored to the group, the sessions will also include parts which engage social cooperation and teamwork, so that the children will experience a sense of competence, self-determination and enjoyment of exercise while enhancing motor skills and athletic ability.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Maximal strength

The mid-thigh pull is measured on the force plate, as is the hand grip force (Leonardo Mechanograph® Novotec Medical GmbH, Pforzheim, Germany). The mid-thigh pull corresponds to a static deadlift, i.e. pulling up a bar in the centre of the thigh, and thus provides an image of the force transmission of the muscle loops up to the hand force to transfer the force to the measuring device. The test subject has a hip and knee angle of 135-140° and tries to pull as quickly and strongly as possible on the vertically fixed bar in the centre of the thigh. As the test subject is standing on the force plate, the transmitted force is measured precisely. In contrast to the dynamic 1-repetition maximum, this simple test offers a high level of safety as an isometric measurement and, in particular, has a high test-retest reliability. This measurement is therefore not only attractive to perform, but also makes it easy to analyse strength curves and maximum strength.