In 2012, The Asia-Fit Study was lunched in order to compare levels of physical activity, fitness and obesity of adolescents among major metropolitan cities in East and Southeast Asia. Hui et al. (2014) reported that Japanese adolescents were the highest moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and endurance performances. Most of middle schools in Japan strongly encourage students to participate in a club activity in school.
PURPOSE: To clarify the effects of school sports club activity on physical fitness among Asian adolescents, and to suggest PA promotion policies in Asia.
METHODS: A total of 12590 valid adolescents’ data (age 12-15 years) were collected from eight major metropolitan cities in East and Southeast Asia, including Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Singapore and Bangkok. Analytic items included whether or not subjects joined sports club activity (with/without two hours or more of PA each week) after class, self-reported MVPA (IPAQ) and an endurance performance test (15m PACER).
RESULTS: T-tests, by gender, indicated that sports club group was significantly higher in endurance performance (p < .01) in all cities, except females of Bangkok, Shanghai and Taipei, males of Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai, than their counterparts. Effect sizes (Cohen’s d) in Tokyo (male: .88, female: .74) were clearly larger than the other cities (on average, male: .33, female: .30). Prevalence of sports club participants with two hours or more of PA each week in Japan (male: 49.7%, female: 36.7%) was considerably higher than the other cities (on average, male: 15.7%, female: 10.5%). The MVPA of sports club participants was also significant higher than non-sports club participants (p< .05) in all cities, except males of Shanghai.
CONCLUSIONS: According to a national survey in Japan, the rate of participation of sports club conducted outside school is quite low compared with sports club in school. Therefore, our data demonstrated that high participation rate and frequency of sport club activity in school played a role in maintaining a high level of an endurance performance among Japanese adolescents. These findings might suggest that promotion of sports club activity in school is one of the most important factors to decrease physically unfit and inactive adolescents in Asia.
Funding information: “This work was carried out with the aid of a research grant from the NUS Initiative to Improve Health in Asia (NIHA).”
© 2015 American College of Sports Medicine
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