JUNIOR readers of this magazine aside, it seems that fitness levels among British schoolchildren are far from impressive. In a review published in the latest edition of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, an international collaboration of researchers assessed children from 50 countries over a series of 20m shuttle runs performed as a bleep test. It was a study of considerable size, involving 1.1 million schoolchildren aged 9-17.
But results for Britain placed children a mid-table 21st, well behind countries including Iceland, Slovakia, Japan and France. Tanzania topped the lot as the fittest youths, while the USA placed a lowly 47th out of 50. “This study is the largest of its kind so it’s exciting to have this evidence at hand,” said Grant Tomkinson, senior author and associate professor at the University of North Dakota.