Health-related fitness profile of college students attending physical education classes

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess health-related fitness (HRPF) of college students at Federal University of Santa Catarina. Subjects were 438 students (249 males and 189 females), with ages ranging from 17 to 29 years. The test battery included measures of body mass index, muscular endurance and strength, flexibility and cardiorespiratory fitness. The analyses were performed with the SPSS statistical package (version 11.5). Descriptive statistics and the tests Kolmogorov-Smirnov, U-Mann-Whitney and Chi-square(?²). The level of significance was set at p<0.05. Cardiorespiratory fitness was the variable with the highest prevalence of low fitness in both genders. Men had greater prevalence of overweight than women and also low fitness for flexibility and push-up tests (p<0.05). For the sit-up test and cardiorrespiratory fitness females showed greater low fitness prevalences. A large proportion of students clustered two or three low HRPF components. These results reinforce the need for implementation of programs that improve HRPF, since it is considered an important health factor.