Discussion
obesity, CRF, overweight, overweight or obesity
OBESITY, OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY, CRF, CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES
The main purpose of the present study was to compare the effects of school-based HIIE versus MICE on physical health-related parameters in children with overweight. The main findings demonstrated that school-based HIIE intervention was more beneficial in improving the body composition, VO2peak and MAS as compared to MICE. Moreover, no significant difference was observed in the improvement of muscular fitness between HIIE and MICE interventions.Overweight and obesity are external forms of excess fat accumulation and storage, as well as the result of excessive energy storage [Muscular fitness is considered one of the main fitness components in maintaining overall health and is usually inversely associated with overweight or obesity. Contrary to our hypothesis, HIIE was not superior to MICE for improving muscular fitness. Our study is the first study to investigate the effect of school-based interventions on the CMJ and 50 m sprint ability in children with overweight, as well as compare the effects of 8-week HIIE and MICE that indicated that both interventions were equally beneficial in promoting the lower-limb power sprinting ability. In contrast to our results, a previous meta-analysis [
Children with overweight and obesity possessed lower CRF than normal-weight children, which increased the risk of cardiovascular diseases [To our knowledge, the strength of this study was the feasibility of HIIE protocol in school setting, which was not limited by the equipment and venue. The ability to conduct 20-m shuttle run and maximal aerobic speed (MAS) to assess training intensity also contributes to optimize the running programs design and obtain more improvement in body composition and CRF parameters. While there are some limitations should be acknowledged. Firstly, only boys were recruited in this study, so the subsequent studies should focus on both sexes and the more obesity groups to determine the specific effects of HIIE and MICE. Secondly, we did not monitor the daily physical activity level of each participant with a questionnaire or accelerometer, which may improve the quality of such studies if these measurements are later implemented in the future.