Trends in physical fitness before and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Austrian children, 2026, Drenowatz et al

[forestglip]

Trends in physical fitness before and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Austrian children

Drenowatz, Clemens; Greier, Klaus; Hinterkörner, Franz

Background
It has been well-documented that the COVID-19 pandemic and implemented policies disrupted physical activity and negatively affected physical fitness. It remains, however, unclear whether such effects were short lived or still linger after restrictions have been lifted.

Methods
Using data from a state-wide fitness testing program that included 37,396 Upper Austrian elementary school-children (48.7% girls) this study examined trends in physical fitness 3 years prior (2016–2019) and three years after the COVID-19 pandemic (2021–2024).

Results
BMI percentiles and the prevalence of overweight/obesity increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic but returned to pre-COVID-19 levels in the years thereafter.

Performance in cardiorespiratory endurance, agility, and muscular power showed notable declines during the pandemic, with endurance and agility remaining at persistently low levels with no evidence of recovery in subsequent years.

Flexibility also decreased during the COVID-19 period but returned to pre-COVID levels in years after restrictions have been lifted. Linear speed and manipulative skills were only modestly affected.

Subgroup analyses further showed that declines were most pronounced and persistent among children with overweight/obesity, who showed a continued decline in cardiorespiratory endurance and speed after the pandemic.

Conclusions
Even though weight-related effects of the pandemic were relatively short-lived in Austrian children, deficits in multiple components of physical fitness have persisted, exacerbating pre-existing secular declines.

These results highlight the need for sustained public health strategies that promote physical activity to restore physical fitness and mitigate long-term consequences, particularly among children with excess body weight.

Web | DOI | PDF | Discover Public Health | Open Access

 

[rvallee]

It has been well-documented that the COVID-19 pandemic and implemented policies disrupted physical activity and negatively affected physical fitness

Uh, not it hasn't. It's been asserted plenty, assumed and presumed and so on, but no one has any such data beyond minor changes. Organized physical activities at school were disrupted, but here's something weird about physical activity and children: they can and will just do the thing on their own. Here, they even admit the effect was small:

Both, sprint and 6-minute run performance remained relatively stable at lower levels post COVID-19, resulting in significantly worse performance when comparing the average of 3 years prior to and after COVID-19 (p < 0.01) even though effects were small (η²sprint=0.005; η²6-min run=0.006).

The problem here is with the use of significant. In common language, significant means important, something you can't miss. In statistical analyses like this one, it means the smallest blip you can find that isn't zero, one that you would miss if you didn't calculate it precisely. That confusion is constantly exploited to amplify small issues and to minimize serious ones based on whims and biases. Sometimes it's lies, damned lies and statistics.

When you look at the graphs, they had to cut the y-axis down and zoom in on a 1% range in order to show an effect on most of the variables. What would on a normal scale be a straight line looks like a tiny curve on the zoomed in graph. This is how small the effect is. It's not even "blink and you'll miss it", it's "hang on I have to zoom this way in for you to see it".

As for weight, diet plays a bigger role anyway, so blaming weight gain on less exercise is misleading. There are confounding factors here, not all of this can be attributed to physical activity, and yet without causal evidence they do it anyway. And this is where they find most of the impact, which they admit.

So actually this is a fake problem, while the very real consequences of COVID, including Long Covid, are entirely ignored. Medicine genuinely prefers to respond to imaginary simple-but-wrong problems with easy-but-wrong solutions over engaging with reality as it is. Humans gonna human, so you can bet this fake problem will get 100x the attention and resources that LC deserves.

 

[Peter T]

Sorry I have not got the oomph to read the full article, but does their analysis allow them to distinguish a small change in the average due to a small change involving lots of participants scores compared to a larger change in the score of just a few? That is can the study distinguish a small change involving everyone rather than a small number experiencing a marked effect due to say Long Covid with the rest presenting as they would have had there been no pandemic?

 

[rvallee]

Even more absurd is that the problem of organized sports does have one easy solution: money. Basic physical activity, like just jogging on the street, is free, but it's boring, and it doesn't hit the buttons in human psychology that love variety, being challenged and working towards a goal. School activities being disrupted was a problem here because organized sports are expensive and time-consuming. When they happen during school time using school resources it's free for parents.

This means subsidizing physical activity, which isn't really happening at scale. According to medical evidence, exercise is the bestest medicine of all, should pay for itself many times over in reduced health care spending. And yet it's not happening because organized sports are expensive. Less expensive than the health care they are asserted to reduce, but no one with control of the purse agrees with that calculation, even though it comes from the same accounts. Public, governments, and private, health insurers, make the same calculations. And they do calculate it, precisely, to the dollar, what they spend and what they gain and they reach the conclusion that it's just not true.

Because in the end most people do physical activity for leisure because of the "for leisure" part, to enjoy themselves, to feel better, to socialize and distract themselves. All the "secondary benefits" that are the only true outcomes of most trials, unless someone wants to count "how many times can you push this ball into a wall in a minute?" as some sort of useful thing to achieve.

And no one in charge sees a real benefit in that. The main goal of health care is to keep the population as productive as possible, to work as long and as hard as they can. It's not about making people happy, in fact people being miserable is a necessary feature of our primitive economic systems. So, something where the main outcome is that people are happier isn't worth it, because it doesn't lead to more money in the bank accounts of rich people. And those happen to be the only benefits out of psychobehavioral ideology, which is why it's worthless.

 

[rvallee]

Sorry I have not got the oomph to read the full article, but does their analysis allow them to distinguish a small change in the average due to a small change involving lots of participants scores compared to a larger change in the score of just a few? That is can the study distinguish a small change involving everyone rather than a small number experiencing a marked effect due to say Long Covid with the rest presenting as they would have had there been no pandemic?

That would require comparing between places where they did or did not actually "lock down". Which are plenty, most rural areas barely bothered. That no one has done this analysis in 6 years says everything.

They do somewhat address the Long Covid issue, but lie about how there isn't any data about it (there absolutely is data about it). And they also frame LC incorrectly, it isn't at all limited to cardiovascular issues.:

Additionally, children and adolescents who had a SARS-CoV-2 infection may be left with persistent health issues such as ventricular arrhythmias and myocarditis, which is referred to as long COVID or post COVID condition [31, 32] that potentially affect physical fitness and lifestyle choices beyond the pandemic period. At this time limited information, however, is available on lingering effects of COVID-19 related movement restrictions on physical fitness and motor competence and it remains to be determined whether the resilience of children enables them to overcome negative consequences of the impaired access to opportunities for PA over a prolonged period of time. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine whether physical fitness in children returned to pre-COVID-19 levels in the years following the pandemic and whether trends in physical fitness differed by weight status.

Elsewhere they do describe LC more accurately, but still pretend like it hasn't already been studied and found to be significant:

During post-pandemic years the development of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (i.e., long COVID), may also contribute to lower physical fitness as it has been associated with fatigue, respiratory problems, headache, nausea or dizziness [64]. With an estimated prevalence of 23% to 25% of long COVID symptoms among youth [65, 66], such effects should be considered in future studies that examine trends in physical fitness.

But otherwise they do note that the primary factor in change is weight gain, and it's still overall a small effect.

 

[Felis Catus]

So kids stopped gaining weight when parents went back to the office and stopped baking?