Scientific Programme
Sports and Exercise Medicine and Health
IS-MH05 - JSPFSM-ECSS Exchange Symposium: Children’s physical fitness in a changing world: Tracking trends in the era of inactivity and climate change
Date: 08.07.2026, Time: 11:00 - 12:15, Session Room: Auditorium B (STCC)
Description
Physical fitness is a powerful indicator of current health and a robust predictor of future health. However, global evidence indicates significant declines in children’s physical fitness—particularly cardiorespiratory fitness—over the past two decades. This decline has been largely driven by reduced physical activity and increased sedentary behaviour, further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, environmental changes associated with climate change, including more frequent and intense heatwaves, increasingly restrict children’s opportunities for physical activity—particularly during the extremely hot summers in Japan. To clarify how these societal changes affect children’s fitness, nationwide surveillance systems are essential. Yet, only a few countries, like Japan and Slovenia, maintain long-term, population-level fitness surveillance programs. This symposium will highlight how national fitness data are used to track health trends, inform policy decisions, and design effective interventions. By integrating epidemiological evidence with physiological perspectives, the symposium aims to identify strategies to sustain and enhance children’s fitness in our changing world. Collaboration between countries with world-leading child fitness datasets will help establish a global framework for fitness surveillance, paving the way toward internationally coordinated monitoring of children’s fitness worldwide.
Chair(s)
Tetsuhiro Kidokoro
Nippon Sport Science University, Faculty Of Sport Science
Japan
Speaker A
Shawnda A Morrison
University of Ljubljana, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine
Slovenia
Read CVECSS Lausanne 2026: IS-MH05 [23689]
Maintaining one's physical fitness as a powerful lifelong disease prevention tool in the age of climate change
Physical fitness (PF) is defined as an ability to complete daily tasks with vigour and alertness, and to meet physical challenges in unforeseen emergencies. Low PF is linked to premature mortality and is a powerful modifiable risk factor to many non-communicable diseases. Physical fitness monitoring systems have become a top international public health priority, along with creating international consensus on testing priorities, norms, and health-related feedback. This review outlines: (1) why physical fitness in childhood is an important health-determinant (2) best-practice examples of how fitness monitoring can be used to identify changes in population statistics over time, using the Republic of Slovenia as a case for both slow (obesity trends) and rapid (pandemic) perturbations to the system, and (3) discussing the broader value of fitness monitoring systems in the context of climate change, especially regarding high heat scenarios. Several governmental actions related to surveillance systems are identified, including policies, strategies, programs, and guidelines. Physical fitness surveillance, when performed consistently, can detect rapid changes in the health of a given population when social transitions occur. A global observatory of physical fitness would be beneficial to help address these issues, especially during times of multi-factorial stressors (conflict, climate change, technology, nutrition, equity).
Speaker B
Tetsuhiro Kidokoro
Nippon Sport Science University, Faculty Of Sport Science
Japan
Read CVECSS Lausanne 2026: IS-MH05 [21106]
Sixty years of physical fitness surveillance in Japan: What have we learned about children’s physical fitness?
Japan has conducted a nationwide physical fitness survey since 1964, providing a unique opportunity to examine long-term trends in children’s fitness over the past six decades. Historical data show that children’s fitness peaked around 1985, followed by a marked decline through the 1990s and 2000s. Although a modest improvement was observed in the 2010s, a sharp deterioration occurred in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in cardiorespiratory fitness. These fluctuations appear to reflect broader social and environmental transitions, including reduced physical activity, increased screen time, restrictions on outdoor activities during the pandemic, and heat-related limitations associated with global warming. Of particular concern is that, even recent data from 2024 indicate that fitness levels have not returned to pre-pandemic values, suggesting that lifestyle and behavioural changes that emerged during the pandemic—the so-called “new normal”—may have persisted beyond the COVID-19 period. This presentation illustrates longitudinal changes in Japanese children’s fitness from 1964 to the present and discusses the sociocultural and environmental contexts underpinning these trends. Understanding how societal and climatic shifts shape children’s physical fitness is essential for developing sustainable, evidence-based strategies to promote active and healthy lifestyles among children in a rapidly changing world.
Speaker C
Nobuaki Tottori
Hyogo University of Teacher Education, Graduate School of Education
Japan
Read CVECSS Lausanne 2026: IS-MH05 [25408]
Adaptive exercise programs for children in our changing world: Insights and lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic
Physical fitness in childhood is a key indicator linked to cardiometabolic, mental, cognitive, and lifelong health. Cardiorespiratory fitness has declined worldwide since the 1980s, and this trend was further accelerated by lifestyle changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Improving children’s physical fitness depends on greater physical activity, regular sport participation, and reduced sedentary time. However, such opportunities have decreased in recent years due to a decline in active commuting to school and restricted outdoor physical activity caused by climate change. Therefore, practical strategies that fit limited time and space are needed to sustain participation across seasons and periods of restriction. As one example, high intensity interval training (HIIT) is a time-efficient option for improving cardiorespiratory fitness and other components of physical fitness, and it can be implemented without special equipment. This presentation will discuss the feasibility and effectiveness of several strategies for improving physical fitness in school settings and home-based online exercise programs including HIIT for children based on our intervention studies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Promoting such effective, accessible, and time-efficient programs contributes not only to children’s immediate well-being but also to their long-term health across the lifespan.