Irish children rank high in fitness drive

A schools’ fitness challenge has found that Irish girls are in the top 20 per cent of European 12-13 year olds in terms of fitness while Irish boys are in the top 30 per cent.

However, the organiser of the challenge said to treat the findings with caution as European fitness levels had consistently fallen in recent years.

When the findings were compared to a recent European study, half of the children taking part were in the top 20 per cent of Europeans for fitness levels.

The First Year Fitness Challenge is being run by Dublin City University with RTÉ Radio 1's John Murray Show.

Almost 8,600 12-13 year-olds from 125 schools around the State signed up to the programme. One unexpected finding was that many more girls took part than boys. In Dublin, almost twice as many girls took part in the challenge whereas in Cork, the gender balance was more even.

The initiative was spearheaded by Prof Niall Moyna, head of DCU’s school of health and human performance in a bid to improve the fitness levels of schoolchildren.

He used the bleep test to measure the children’s fitness levels. This involved 20 metre shuttle-runs, with the time to complete each run getting shorter and shorter until the child could run no longer.

Speaking on the radio show this morning, Prof Moyna said he was “pleasantly surprised” at the findings. Girls were able to run 36 shuttles on average while boys did 53 shuttles.

This put the boys in top 30 per cent of European 12-13 year olds and girls in the top 20 per cent. He said this was encouraging but it could be better because there had been a consistent decline the aerobic fitness level of European adolescents.

“What I would like to see would be that the boys would ideally meet a target of 73 shuttles and currently 20 per cent meet that standard,” he said. This would place boys in the top ten percentile of Europeans. He said girls should be able to achieve 50 shuttles, which would also place them in the top 10 percentile. “Currently one in five boys and girls are attaining the standard that I would like to see,” he said.

One girl in Laois ran 111 shuttles while 84 girls ran more than 80 shuttles. Two boys in Kilkenny ran 136 shuttles while 105 boys ran more than 100.

“I have no doubt, no doubt, that within two years, our first year students will be attaining those standards,” Prof Moyna said.