Aerobic Training for Youths

Cardio has countless benefits for kids: from better heart health, lower risk of certain diseases, better brain functioning, and building up habits for a healthy life. Not to mention, it can also help increase self-esteem, decrease depressive symptoms, and reduce stress. In this post we’ll explore the countless benefits that aerobic exercise has on younger people, as well as look into the current recommendations. 

What Counts as Cardio?

Cardio is considered to be any exercise that gets your heart rate up. More technically speaking, it’s exercise that uses the aerobic pathways - pathways that heavily rely on oxygen in order to provide the body with energy. When you improve your cardio, you’re making your heart more efficient and able to pump more blood with every beat, your lungs adapt to take in more oxygen, and your muscles become more efficient at using that oxygen. 

Most people think of running or jogging when they hear cardio, but cardio could actually be any activity that fits the above description. You could play tennis, hike, swim, kickbox, walk, and you could even turn a resistance training workout into a more cardio focused workout.

Why Should There be More Emphasis on Exercise for Youths?

 All the parents and grandparents who complain about younger people being glued to their screens might actually have a point. It should come as no surprise to hear that activity levels among children and teenagers has declined over the past few decades. Children of today are leading increasingly sedentary lifestyles that leads them to neglect the physical activity that has been typical to this developmental period in life.1,2

Not enough physical activity has been shown to lead to various health issues, such as: postural problems (e.g. scoliosis), developmental disorders, somatic conditions, problems with weight, circulatory issues, greater mental health symptoms, as well as premature death.3,4,5,6,7,8 Also, it’s been shown that teens who don’t play sports or exercise are more prone to risky behaviours, which would include things like experimenting with drugs and alcohol, and attempting suicide and self-harming behaviours.9,10,11

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Brain Gains

Childhood is a crucial time: it sets the stage and dramatically impacts almost every aspect later in life. It is crucial to set up healthy habits and take advantage of the body’s adaptability at that stage to ensure proper growth and to help set up that kid for future success.

In early- and mid-childhood, development of motor, cognitive and social skills are already taking place.12 Meanwhile, late childhood is the time where kids undergo many biological, mental, and social changes.13,14,15 The brain goes through many changes at this time, which makes it very prone to external influences - good and bad. This is the time where there are plenty of changes in brain structure and functioning, affecting executive functions, rational memory, and increases in hypothetical-deductive thinking and reasoning.16,17,18

As one progresses from childhood into adolescence, there are even more brain changes that occur. Around the ages of 11 for girls and 14 for boys, the density of grey matter in the brain peaks and then starts to decrease due to the loss of some synapses and the strengthening of others.16 At the same time, white matter begins to increase in density, which is associated with increasing the efficiency of these synapses. It’s worth mentioning that childhood is the time where the highest brain plasticity occurs which allows for easier acquiring of new skills and competences.17,18,19

So, seeing that this is a crucial time of structural changes in the brain where external influences have a major impact, we want to try to provide as many positive influences as possible! Next up, we’ll dive into how aerobic exercise can help be one of these positive influences.

Read about how strength training can be beneficial for youths HERE {LINK}

Benefits

Engaging in physical activity has positive effects on multiple systems: cardiovascular, respiratory, muscular, motor, neurological, psychological - the list goes on! Let’s take a deeper look into just some of the benefits cardiovascular exercise can have for young people!

Improved Cardiovascular Health Markers

Various cardiovascular-related health outcomes were seen to be improved following aerobic training in youths. These studies have shown that better cardiovascular fitness has an inverse relationship with: 

• All-Cause Mortality20

• Myocardial Infarction21

• Stroke22

• Heart Failure23

• Disability24

Improving cardiovascular fitness during childhood was also associated with better measures in:

• Adiposity25,26,27

• Waist Circumference28

• Blood Pressure29

• Insulin Resistance & Fatty Liver Disease30,31

• Arterial Stiffness32

Bone Health

If you’ve read our blog on Strength Training for Youths, you’d know that stressing bone will result in improvements in bone health. There are benefits to bone health when it comes to aerobic exercise too! Think of if you go for a run, you accumulate hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of impacts with every stride you take! 

One thing to consider is that there are more studies supporting the idea that children who are pre-pubertal are more responsive to bone loading than pubertal or post-pubertal children.33,34 Also, the increases in bone health may be site specific. For example, one study found enhanced bone strength in one of the shin bones following a jumping and exercise protocol.35 One meta-analysis found that simple exercise interventions in children resulted in a 0.6-1.7% greater annual increase in bone mineral content, which could have substantial implications bone health later in life.33

Lung Health

What do most people do after they’ve worked up a sweat? They start breathing a lot harder, which means the lungs are put to work! Aerobic work has been shown to increase forced expiratory volume in the first second, and vital capacity in children, adolescents, and young adults. On top of that, better cardiovascular fitness during youth is associated with greater lung volumes later in life.36 

Also to note, while not directly associated with youths, a recent 20-year follow up study suggests that maintaining or improving your cardiovascular fitness through mid-adult life helps slow down lung function decline.37 

Improved Mental Health

One huge aspect of health that is more recently gaining attention (and rightfully so), is mental health. It is clear that there is a link between physical activity and mental health. Aerobic exercise and better cardiovascular fitness was found to be linked to:

• Reduced depression38

• Increased self-esteem & self-worth38,39,40

• Lower incidence of mental health disorders41

• Increased life satisfaction42,43

• Improvements in stress, depression, quality of life, and mood following brain injury44,45

One big finding is that the positive effects on mental health seem to be strongly correlated with improvements in cardiovascular fitness, more so than with changes in body composition!40 A lot of these mental health benefits are thought to be related to changes in brain structure and signalling (e.g. serotonin).

COGNITION

Attention

It’s clear that children and youth who participate in physical activity have an improved ability to focus their attention compared to those who don’t.46,47,48 

Sports and organised games can play a big role in improving attention. Youth who regularly play sports are shown to be calmer during lessons, and are shown to have improved executive functions.46,49,50 

Even a 12 minute bout of cardio improved the selective attention of children.51 These sort of short bouts of exercise, whether they’re regular or irregular, lead to an increase in blood flow and levels of oxyhemoglobin, which increase the operation of executive functions for up to half an hour.52 

Thinking

Thinking is a broad term that encompasses abstract thinking, conceptualising, creative thinking, and planning. One interesting finding is that adults who were involved in organised sports as children demonstrated a lower level of creativity compared to adults who participated in non-organised sport activities.53 Another one looked at children who attended a football exercise program and found them to have improved planning processes compared to sedentary peers.54

Academic Achievement

Aerobic exercise has been found to be highly correlated with better grades in school.55,56,57,58,59 With maintaining a healthy cardiovascular fitness level or improving it has been shown to be associated with academic achievement.57,60,61 Not only the fitness level, but the amount of time participating in aerobic activities has been found to lead to better grades as well.62,63 For instance, one study found that school aged girls who played a sport for at least one hour per week had significantly better maths and reading scores compared to other girls who did not participate in sport.64 Just one hour a week! Surprisingly though, this same study didn’t find that the same applied to boys.  

Not only were maths and reading levels found to be affected by aerobic exercise, but language as well. Physical activity that included an aerobic component was found to positively affect language understanding and foreign language vocabulary learning outcomes.65,66,67 

It’s thought that better academic outcomes are closely related to better executive functioning. Executive functioning is a broad umbrella that encompasses different skills such as working memory, planning, adaptable thinking, self-control and more. So you can see why improving executive functioning is so important for youth (and, I mean, adults too). But since younger people are more adaptable, this is the time where you want to focus on improving these skills. Executive functions are crucial for success in school and also for the emotional development of children and youth!68 How do you work on these skills? Well, a mix of physical and cognitive training can help, including games, computer drills, and aerobic exercise.68 Some specialists think that aerobic training actually has the most significant influence on executive functions!69,70 Activities that include a bit more of a thinking process to it, think martial arts or yoga, have been found to improve executive functions.71 

Training these cognitive skills should be thought of in a similar way as training any physical skill. You want to gradually increase the level of difficulty, train the specific aspect you want to develop, and eventually you should see improvements in those areas.

Learning & Memory

Let’s talk more about learning and memory. There’s tons of evidence to suggest that physical activity makes a huge impact in these areas. First off, it’s been found that children who had higher levels of overall fitness had greater basal ganglia and hippocampus capacities, which are the areas of the brain that are associated with cognitive control and memory.72,73 

What’s interesting is that improvements to working memory were found across various age groups, from young children (3-5 years), older children (8-12 years), and young teens (12-14 years), when they went through a physical activity regimen that included aerobic exercise.4,46,74,75,76,77 

A few sports that also saw improvements in working memory include tennis, soccer, and karate.54,72,78 

Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury

A new area being researched is the effects of cardiovascular exercise post traumatic brain injury (TBI). Of course, many things need to be taken into account such as severity of the injury, timing, symptoms, and the individual themselves. Since this is a relatively new area of study, there aren’t too many studies on the topic and there are some gaps and limitations. That being said, the research so far does seem promising that aerobic exercise is a safe and effective rehab strategy post TBI given the appropriate dosage. 

There was a review done by Snowden et al., 2023, that looked at aerobic exercise post TBI, and looked at its effects in an early intervention strategy (within 2 weeks of injury), or chronic intervention for persistent symptoms (4+ weeks post-intervention).79

For the early intervention group, the studies looked at recovery from concussion, looking specifically at duration of recovery, symptoms, time to return to play, and the individual’s ability to tolerate exercise. The protocol was relatively similar across all the papers that were looked at, which included:

• 15-20 minutes of aerobic activity

• Done multiple times a week (2-7x)

• Usually either jogging, walking, or cycling

• In the range of 60-90% of their maximum heart rate

In this group of studies, it was found that implementing early aerobic exercise interventions reduced their recovery time compared to the standard care.80,81,82,83,84  Also, one paper found that the early exercise group was less likely to develop persistent post-concussion symptoms as well.85

Now, in the chronic group, the studies looked at teens who were at least 1 month post injury who had at least once symptom. The protocols in the papers were pretty similar to the acute patient protocols. Of the benefits, many papers found improvements in cognitive scores, processing speeds, memory, and balance.86,87,88 One study also looked at the participants’ attitude towards exercise and 100% of the participants said they found the intervention to be effective.89

In this review, there was only one study that looked at a severe case of TBI in a teenager, with the intervention coming 2 years post injury.90 They had the participant do a mix of resistance training and aerobic training in 35 minute bouts 4 times per week for 4 weeks. They found the participant experienced an improvement in cardiovascular health, quality of life, and gait speed. 

Recommendations (Guidelines & Ideas)

The current Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines suggest that children and youths between the ages of 5-17 should aim to accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day. This physical activity should involve a variety of aerobic exercise based activity. On top of that, adding in bone and muscle strengthening exercise 3 times a week is also recommended.91

Here are some suggestions that can help encourage your kid to exercise more and have fun while doing it!

Do it as a Family

One of the best ways to set a good example for your child is to include them in your own exercise time. They get to see their mom or dad workout, and what kid doesn’t want to copy mom or dad? Whether this be strapping on your running shoes together for a trail walk or hike, or adding some training wheels to a bike so they can ride along with you, this is a great way to encourage your kid to be active as well as spending some quality time together.

Join a Sports Team or League

A great way to get your kid moving is to sign them up for a sport. Whether a team sport like soccer or basketball, or an individual one like tennis or martial arts, this is a great way to expose your kids to exercise, athletic movements, and socialisation. Plenty of cities run rec leagues for kids, and some places might even have pick-up games scheduled for whoever wants to join. 

Go to the Park

Encourage your kid to go to their local park! Whether to meet up with friends, or try to make friends while you’re there. Getting some fresh air, playing on the playground or field, and playing with other kids is a sure way to get your kid moving while having fun doing so.  

Think Outside the Box

There are other ways to get active if sports aren’t your thing. Really, any movement that gets your heart rate up for a good length of time can count as cardio. So why not try gardening, or jumping on a trampoline, or making it a race to get chores done, or simply finding games for your kid that gets them moving a bit more is a great way to get their heart pumping and body moving. Whatever it is, try to find something they like and stick with it!

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