engleski

INDICATORS OF PHYSICAL FITNESS AMONG THE ELDERLY BASED ON THE VALUES OF THEIR BMI

The modern way of life has led to an increase in the population of the elderly. This occurrence has led to the need for further research on the factors whose action enables the elderly to fulfill their everyday needs by themselves. Some of the more significant factors include physical abilities, which are expressed by the parameters of physical fitness and body mass. With the aim of determining the differences in the indicators of physical fitness depending on the size of the Body Mass Index (BMI) of the elderly, we used the battery of the Senior Fitness Test (SFT), which consisted of the 8- Foot Up-and-Go, Back Scratch, Chair Sit-and-Reach, 2-Minute Step Test, 30-Second Chair Stand, and the Arm Curl (Rikli & Jones, 2001). The study was carried out on a sample of 1288 participants (594 men and 694 women) aged from 60 to 80, who live in their own homes in the cities or villages of Central, Eastern and South Serbia. On the basis of the value of their BMI, the participants were divided into three sub-samples: (1) participants with normal body weight, (2) participants with increased body weight (overweight) and (3) obese individuals. Further subsamples of men and women were isolated. The calculation of the statistical significance of the difference between the subsample of men and women was determined based on the unifactorial ANOVA analysis ANOVA (P≥0.05). The results are shown in tabular form, while the discussion and conclusions point out the significant difference in the indicators of SFT between the subsamples determined based on the BMI in favor of participants with normal weight.

physical fitness; elderly; BMI

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