Author(s): PRIVITERA, M., DE GIORGIO, A., CORREALE, L., LIBERALI, G., MARTINIS, L., DELLANNA, S., BERNARDES, A.G., IVANISKI-MELLO, A., PEYRÉ-TARTARUGA, L.A., MONTOMOLI, C., BUZZACHERA, C.F., Institution: UNIVERSITY OF PAVIA, Country: ITALY, Abstract-ID: 2014

Introduction
Adolescents spend much of their daily time in schools, which are ideal settings for promoting health-related behaviours. Unfortunately, schools have often neglected such behaviours, including physical activity, due to their focus on academic achievement and economic restrictions. Decreased levels of physical activity, however, may compromise the scholarly purposes of academic achievements. A plausible solution is to promote time-efficient physical activity interventions, such as breaking up prolonged sedentary times with light-intensity physical activity and/or using standing desks. Whether such interventions affect parameters of health and fitness and executive functions, however, is still uncertain. We, therefore, investigated the single and combined effects of classroom-based active breaks and using standing desks on adolescents health-related fitness and executive functions.

Methods
Participants were 100 secondary school students (78% females, aged 15 to 17 yr). Four classes were randomly assigned into one of four groups: control (CT, n = 20), active breaks (ACT, n = 26), standing desks (STD, n = 26), and active breaks and standing desks combined (ACT+STD, n = 28). In both the ACT and ACT+STD groups, participants completed 3 × 8-min active breaks per weekday for 12 weeks, while in both the STD and ACT+STD groups participants completed 3 × 8-min using standing desks. In the ACT+STD group both interventions were alternate. Health-related fitness, i.e., muscular strength/power/endurance, aerobic endurance, flexibility, and blood pressure, and executive function, i.e., short-term working memory, visual attention, and task switching, were assessed at baseline and post-intervention. ANCOVA tests using baseline values as covariates were used, with P-value set as <0.05.

Results
The adherence to the interventions was relatively high (>80%). There were significant improvements in muscular endurance, aerobic endurance, flexibility, and systolic blood pressure (P<0.01), primarily in the ACT group. Similarly small, but non-significant trends were observed for muscular strength (P=0.06) and diastolic blood pressure (P=0.06). No between-group differences were observed for muscular power and all indicators of executive function (P>0.05).

Conclusion
Our findings suggest that classroom-based physical activity interventions appreciably impact health-related fitness, but not executive function, in secondary school students. The most noticeable benefits were observed when breaking up prolonged sedentary times with light-intensity physical activity. These results underscore the importance of incorporating physical activity breaks within classroom settings.

This research was funded by the Ministero dellIstruzione (DD 90 20/10/2022).