Longitudinal associations of cycling to school with adolescent fitness
Introduction
Low rates of participation in active travel have led to the journey to school being seen as a potential target for intervention to increase young people's daily physical activity. Children who walk or cycle to school are more physically active than those using motorised transport, and this extra physical activity can exceed the amount due to the journey alone (Sirard et al., 2005, Cooper et al., 2003, Cooper et al., 2005, Tudor-Locke et al., 2003). Recently, cycling to school has also been associated with higher levels of cardio-respiratory fitness in children and adolescents (Cooper et al., 2006). Cardio-respiratory fitness (CRF) may be an important health-related outcome of higher physical activity. Habitually active children are fitter than less active children (Eiberg et al., 2005) and fitness can be increased by physical training (Baquet et al., 2003). Low fitness has been associated with clustering of metabolic risk factors in young people that may persist into adulthood, and modifying risk factor levels in children may thus be of critical importance for ameliorating future CVD risk (Andersen et al., 2003, Bao et al., 1994, Janz et al., 2003). In optimizing young people's health it is important to understand not only how we may increase physical activity, but also how to improve fitness. Cycling to school may achieve both of these aims. The purpose of the present investigation was to use a cohort of children where associations between cycling and higher CRF have been demonstrated, to investigate whether these associations persist after 6 years of follow-up and to explore whether a change in mode of travel to school is associated with a change in CRF.
Section snippets
Participants
This paper describes data from the Danish arm of the European Youth Heart Study. In 1997 a representative sample of third grade (8–10 years) students were recruited from schools in Odense, Denmark (Riddoch et al., 2005). Seven hundred and seventy one children from 25 schools were invited to participate of whom 589 (310 girls and 279 boys) consented. In 2003, three hundred and eighty four (214 girls and 170 boys) of these individuals were re-examined. The ethical committee of Vejle and Funen
Results
The 384 participants in the longitudinal cohort did not differ at baseline from the rest of the 1997 cohort in age, height, weight or physical activity, although fitness was significantly higher in both girls and boys (Girls: 2.87 ± 0.52 vs 2.71 ± 0.46 Wmax kg− 1, F = 6.46, P = .012; Boys: 3.28 ± 0.51 vs 3.03 ± 0.65 Wmax kg− 1, F = 11.79, P = .001). This difference may be explained by more children cycling to school in the longitudinal sample (41.0% vs 31.7%). Demographic characteristics and travel mode to
Discussion
This study confirms our previous finding that cycling to school is strongly associated with higher fitness in children and extends this work, showing that over 6 years of follow-up, young people who had started to cycle to school were fitter than those who remained non-cyclists. These data suggest that regular commuter cycling is associated with higher levels of CRF in young people.
Cycling to school is a strong predictor of higher CRF, and to identify the implications for public health, it is
Conclusions
There is a consistent association between cycling and higher CRF in young people. Whether the differences in fitness between cyclists and non-cyclists that we observed are due only to active commuting remains to be established. Nonetheless, these data indicate that cycling to school may play a role, supporting programmes that encourage active travel to school, and in particular cycling, for young people.
Conflict of interests
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Acknowledgments
The study received financial support from the Danish Medical Research Council and the Danish Heart Foundation.
References (18)
- et al.
Biological cardiovascular risk factors cluster in Danish children and adolescents: the European Youth Heart Study
Prev. Med
(2003) - et al.
Physical activity levels of children who walk, cycle or are driven to school
Am. J. Prev. Med
(2005) - et al.
Commuting to school. Are children who walk more physically active?
Am. J. Prev. Med
(2003) - et al.
Maximal oxygen uptake in Danish adolescents 16–19 years of age
Eur. J. Appl. Physiol
(1987) - et al.
Persistence of multiple cardiovascular risk clustering related to syndrome X from childhood to young adulthood. The Bogalusa Heart Study
Arch. Intern. Med
(1994) - et al.
Effects of high intensity intermittent training on peak VO2 in prepubertal children
Int. J. Sports Med
(2002) - et al.
Endurance training and aerobic fitness in young people
Sports Med
(2003) - et al.
Active travel to school and cardiovascular fitness in Danish children and adolescents
Med. Sci. Sports Exerc
(2006) - et al.
Maximum oxygen uptake and objectively measured physical activity in Danish children 6–7 years of age: the Copenhagen school child intervention study
Br. J. Sports Med.
(2005)
Cited by (108)
Solar accessibility in high latitudes urban environments: A methodological approach for street prioritization
2024, Sustainable Cities and SocietyWeight centrism in research on Children's active transport to school
2023, Journal of Transport and HealthActive transportation in high density residential areas in Lembah Pantai during pandemic COVID 19
2023, Asian Transport StudiesActive transport to and from school
2020, Advances in Transportation and Health: Tools, Technologies, Policies, and DevelopmentsWalkability, transit, and body mass index: A panel approach
2018, Journal of Transport and HealthCitation Excerpt :Moodie et al. (2011) find that an Australian program to increase active travel among 10- and 11-year-olds was effective in reducing BMI, though they conclude the program may not be cost-effective. Few of studies have closely examined the role of public transit in the health of school-age children, and of those that included transit use in their studies, most have found no connection to BMI in school children (e.g., Andersen et al. 2009; Cooper et al. 2008; Voss and Sandercock 2010). While the issue of transportation and body weight has gained traction in policy and research in recent years, much of the research has used a cross-sectional approach, and the few longitudinal studies have been inconclusive or small-sample studies.