Children are as fit as endurance athletes

Children are well known for their energy levels and lack of fatigue compared to adults. Research found in Frontiers in Physiology could help develop athletic potential in children and improve the understanding of how children’s bodies change as they progress into adulthood.

“During many physical tasks, children might tire earlier than adults because they have limited cardiovascular capability, tend to adopt less-efficient movement patterns and need to take more steps to move a given distance. Our research shows children have overcome some of these limitations through the development of fatigue-resistant muscles and the ability to recover very quickly from high-intensity exercise,” says Sébastien Ratel, Associate Professor in Exercise Physiology, and co-author Anthony Blazevich, Professor in Biomechanics.
Ratel and Blazevich suggested the energy profiles of children could be comparable to endurance athletes, but there was no evidence to prove this until now.

Three different groups comprising 8 to 12 year-old boys, adults of two different fitness levels and endurance athletes where asked to perform cycling tasks. The participants’ heart-rate, oxygen levels and lactate-removal rates were checked after the cycling tasks to see how quickly they recovered. In all tests, the children outperformed the untrained adults.

“We found the children used more of their aerobic metabolism and were therefore less tired during the high-intensity physical activities,” says Ratel. “They also recovered very quickly — even faster than the well-trained adult endurance athletes, as demonstrated by their faster heart-rate recovery and ability to remove blood lactate. This may explain why children seem to have the ability to play and play and play, long after adults have become tired.”
Ratel and Blazevich explain the significance of their findings. “Many parents ask about the best way to develop their child’s athletic potential. Our study shows that muscle endurance is often very good in children, so it might be better to focus on other areas of fitness such as their sports technique, sprint speed or muscle strength. This may help to optimize physical training in children, so that they perform better and enjoy sports more.”