Biology Reference
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and Bouchard (1998)
also reported a significant but only weak to moderate
relationship between PA and health-related PF among adolescents; how-
ever, they noted that PA accounted for only a relatively small percentage
(11-21%) of the variations in health-related fitness. This finding was further
supported by an earlier review by
Malina (2001)
who concluded that PAwas
not a strong predictor for the fitness levels across childhood through to adult-
hood. In a more recent study,
Blaes, Baquet, Fabre, Van Praagh, and
Berthoin (2011)
also reported that PA level was poorly correlated to
health-related PF among school-aged children.
Notwithstanding the above findings, there are several studies that have
reported positive effects of PA on the fitness levels of adolescents. Both lon-
gitudinal (
Beunen et al., 1992
)
and cross-sectional (
Huang & Malina, 2002
)
studies have revealed that adolescents who were more physically active
tended to be more fit when performing the cardiorespiratory endurance
tasks. This result was found despite the fact that the methods used in classi-
fying adolescents as active or inactive differed across studies.
Aires et al.
(2011)
also found that cardiorespiratory fitness was independently and pos-
itively associated with PA, which further suggested that increasing overall
PA levels may be an effective strategy for improving the fitness levels of ado-
lescents. The magnitude of improvements, however, was found to be
strongly determined by the level of PA (
Pahkala et al., 2013; Timmons
et al., 2010
). Nevertheless, a 4-year longitudinal study conducted by
Baquet, Twisk, Kemper, Van Praagh, and Berthoin (2006)
revealed that
increasing or decreasing PA level from childhood to adolescence was not
associated with changes in PF, but children who were the most physically
active at baseline were the fittest, which further suggests that PF is associated
with maintaining a high level of PA since early life.
It has often been argued that the current evidence on the relationships
between PA and fitness components in children and adolescents is still weak
and inconsistent (
Hands, Larkin, Parker, Straker, & Perry, 2009
), except for
cardiorespiratory endurance; evidence strongly suggests that the benefits of
habitual PA may be only specific to this fitness component. Moreover, PF is
thought to be influenced by several factors other than PA. For example, sed-
entary behavior, such as television viewing and playing video games, was
also found to be negatively related to the indicators of health-related fitness,
although the relationship was not strong (
Katzmarzyk et al., 1998
).
To the best of our knowledge, there are currently no data available on
the relationships between PA and fitness in adolescents in tropical countries.
Hence,
it
is of
the utmost
importance to initiate research to better
