Background/Purpose Few fitness tracking studies covered all health-related fitness components. This study investigated a three-year tracking of all health-related fitness components for adolescents in extreme quartiles (EQ).
Method FITNESSGRM battery (percent body fat or %BF, BMI, PACER, curl-up, push-up, and sit and reach) was administered to 194 students (87 boys) at the beginning of their sixth grade (baseline) and the end of eighth grade (follow-up). The data at each test point were ranked into quartiles respectively, and percentages of participants remaining in the same EQ across the three years were determined using crosstabs.
Analysis/Results The results indicated that BMI had highest tracking within EQ with 75.5-85.0% boys and 76.6-80.8% girls remaining in the same EQs, followed by PACER with 61.6-72.2% boys and 57.1-66.7% girls. All the remaining fitness measures also had significantly (p < .001) high tracking stability within EQ as examined with Kendall's tau-b. In addition, %BF demonstrated higher tracking in fattest/upper quartiles (UQ) than the least fat/lower quartiles (LQ), with 64.7% remaining in UQ vs. 38.9% in LQ for boys and 77.3% (UQ) vs. 63.6% (LQ) for girls. Also, the poorest measures (LQ) in curl-up had higher tracking than the best ones (UQ) with 36.4% (LQ) vs. 23.8% (UQ) for boys and 48.0% (LQ) vs. 37.5% (UQ) for girls.
Conclusions All the health-related fitness measures in EQs have high-level stability among middle school adolescents, and those in the least fit quartiles in %BF or curl-up have higher tracking stability than those in the other EQs, suggesting early intervention for the least-fit adolescents.