The Development of Endurance Through Prolonged Running and Its Effect on the Attention of 9-10-Year-Olds

INTRODUCTION

The problem of human health, and in particular, the student, is relevant and in demand, and the activities for its preservation, conservation, and development are in the field of view of scientists of various scientific fields [1-3].

The priority of preserving and developing human health at school age is determined by the relevance of this problem:

1. at the level of society and the state, where human health is recognized as an important component of the social, cultural, and economic development of the country, the strategic potential of national security, stability and well-being of society, the basis of cultural and civilizational development of the entire world community;
2. at the level of the person himself who needs full-fledged health for life and professional activity, for self-realization and self-development, for happiness;
3. at the level of the pedagogical community, which develops and implements psychological and pedagogical ways to preserve and develop the health of schoolchildren and youth during their formation and formation as individuals and individuals:
4. at the value level in the life of both the individual and society, when health is recognized as the most important value along with other significant values [4, 5].

One of the main problems of health and physical development of younger schoolchildren is physical inactivity, which means "inactivity" in Latin. This concept implies a restriction of motor activity resulting from a sedentary lifestyle. Today, physical inactivity is considered a social disease, along with addiction to gadgets, computer games, etc. This problem has not been spared by children's age. Younger students sit a lot and for a long time. At school for at least 4 hours or more, and then at home for the same amount (children do their homework, play computer games, watch TV, etc.). Younger schoolchildren are less likely to attend music, language, art schools, and very rarely sports. Low level of physical education and sports [6-8]. Without work, the muscles weaken, then atrophy. Strength and endurance decrease, vegetative-vascular dystonia, depression, and other disorders of the nervous system appear, academic performance decreases, and metabolism is disrupted [9]. Inactivity also leads to functional changes in the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, as the muscles that help the movement of blood through the vessels do not work. Lack of blood flow to the brain, and poor outflow through the vessels of the neck lead to changes in intracranial pressure. This causes headaches, fatigue, fatigue, there may be complaints of palpitations, and shortness of breath during physical exertion. Respiratory and digestive disorders occur, and the joints and spine suffer. A prolonged stay in a monotonous position at the table at school and home, or an uncomfortable lying position with a gadget in your hands, can cause a violation of posture, stooping, or spinal deformity. Immunity decreases, vision decreases, overweight, and obesity appears. As a result, blood pressure rises, and diabetes mellitus, heart, and kidney diseases appear [10, 11].

The leading means to overcome such a disease as physical inactivity is the performance of physical exercises of different natures and different orientations. Of course, at this age, it is quite difficult for a child to force himself to perform a certain set of exercises or follow the rules of certain techniques. The solution to this problem is a physical education lesson at school. The main purpose of physical education lessons is the development of motor activity and various physical qualities in children, teaching schoolchildren the basics of a healthy lifestyle, as well as introducing students to independent sports and physical exercises. Physical education at school forms a system of value orientations of a person to a healthy lifestyle and provides motivational, functional, and motor readiness for it. It is carried out in accordance with the general and specific laws, principles, and rules of the pedagogical process [12-14]. The improvement of the physique and the harmonious development of human physiological functions are solved based on comprehensive education of physical qualities and motor abilities, which ultimately leads to a naturally normal, undistorted formation of bodily forms. This task provides for the education of correct posture, proportional development of muscle mass, all parts of the body, assistance in maintaining optimal weight through physical exercises and ensuring bodily beauty [15-17].

The education of physical qualities at school age is provided by the selection of physical exercises and the methodology of the lesson. The most important requirements for the methodology of the development of physical qualities during the age formation of the organism are the comprehensiveness of the impact, the proportionality of the loads and the functionality of the capabilities of the growing organism, the correspondence of the influencing factors with the peculiarities of the stages of age development [18, 19]. Recent studies have shown that only 50% of elementary school students are completely healthy. By the sixth grade, the number of healthy schoolchildren is halved, and by the eleventh grade, only 5% of schoolchildren can boast of having no health problems. The authors are sure that such a catastrophic decline in the indicators of healthy children is directly related to the lack of sports in children's lives. Moreover, to change the situation, it is necessary, at least, to pay special attention to physical education lessons at school [20, 21].

One of the basic physical qualities that need to be developed throughout life is general endurance. General endurance (aerobic capacity) is the ability of the body to perform various activities for a long time and resist fatigue. The effectiveness of the body's activity is reduced by two main factors – physical and nervous fatigue. There are two types of endurance: emotional and physical. The first one allows a person to calmly, serenely, and calmly endure severe debilitating emotional conditions, the physical one helps the body spend less energy by performing certain actions and quickly regenerate its reserves. In addition, endurance directly depends on the level of metabolic processes, on the degree of development of the cardiovascular, nervous, and respiratory systems, as well as on the coordination of the activities of various organs and systems [22-24].

General endurance is characterized by the health of all human organs. The best means for acquiring general endurance is long-term training work of a cyclical nature (running, swimming) with relatively low intensity. At first, it is best to stick to a uniform pace of exercise, since changing it during work will not allow you to perform it for a long time. General endurance, determining the overall performance of the athlete and the level of his health, at the same time, serves as the basis for the development of special endurance. The higher the level of general endurance, the better you can develop special endurance. It is known that a high level of endurance development in childhood provides more effective improvement of other motor abilities, contributes to the improvement of plastic and trophic functions of the body, normalizes the activity of the circulatory and respiratory systems, and improves the functioning of the central nervous system. At the same time, the practice of physical education of schoolchildren indicates that the overall dynamics of endurance of children and adolescents in recent years has not only not improved, but also tends to decrease [25-27].

General endurance is sensitive to training influences and is a person's ability to perform long-term and effective work of a non-specific nature. Much attention is paid to the issue of sensitive periods of development of various physical qualities. Exposure to certain physical qualities during such a period gives a significant effect on the development of this ability. As for the overall endurance, the author's opinion is not significant here, but they differ. For example, most authors believe that the first peak for the development of endurance is the age of 9-10 years in both boys and girls. However, after the age of 13, this period is different, in boys, the sensitive period for the development of aerobic capabilities is the age from 15 to 17 years, and in girls, it is from 13 to 15 years. Thus, it is important not to miss the first sensitive period for the development of general endurance for both boys and girls, aerobic abilities should be purposefully developed at the age of 9-10, which corresponds to the 3rd grade of education in a comprehensive school [28, 29].

The process of regular purposeful physical education or sports training involves the education and development of not only certain skills, abilities, and physical qualities, but also mental processes, traits, and properties of a person's personality. A person engaged in physical culture develops the ability to show the stability of attention, perception, memory, concentration, and switching in conditions of time deficit, mental fatigue, nervous and emotional tension, and stress. Physical culture is used to optimize performance, and prevent neuropsychiatric and psychophysical fatigue. Physical education classes have a direct impact on the development of the intellectual qualities of students. In the course of classes, motor cognitive situations continuously arise, the solution of which requires significant mental stress. A simple solution to a motor problem: how to move correctly, quickly, and accurately, how to correct a mistake – is a chain of mental operations, including observation, generalization, and decision-making. According to the authors, physical exercises not only increase the functional capabilities of the body, and the level of physical fitness of a person, but also help in the development of mental personality traits [30, 31].

The hypothesis of the study is the assumption that the integration of prolonged running into the process of physical education at school in children aged 9-10 years will have a positive impact on the level of endurance development and a positive impact on the attention indicators of schoolchildren. Thus, we assumed that comparing between groups and adding long-running to the regular physical education program at school for children aged 9-10 years would further improve their physical and mental development.

The study aims to assess the impact of prolonged running on the endurance and attention indicators of children aged 9-10 years in physical education classes at school.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study participants

The present study involved children from the third grade of secondary school number sixty in the city of Kirov, Russian Federation. These are boys and girls aged 9-10 years. Before the start of the study, the students underwent a medical examination and were admitted to physical education classes at school, and informed consent to conduct a pedagogical experiment was obtained from each parent.

The exclusion criteria were unhealthy children with health abnormalities, and contraindications to optimal physical activity (problems with obesity, hypertension, joint problems, and other chronic diseases). These are mostly children of a special medical group. All children were differentiated into control and experimental groups (Table 1).

Table 1. Study participants

One can see from Table 1 that some children did not participate in the study for health reasons or their parents did not consent to their participation in the pedagogical study. At the same time, students could refuse to participate in the study at any time. Thus, a total of 120 schoolchildren took part in the pedagogical experiment. It should be noted that all procedures were carried out per the ethical standards of the Helsinki Declaration of 1964 and approved by the special Ethics Committee of the University.

Research procedure

The pedagogical experiment was conducted based on the general educational school 60 in the city of Kirov in Russia from January 10 to May 10, 2023. According to the school curriculum, physical education classes were held 2 times a week for 40 minutes in each class. During the study period, 34 physical education lessons were conducted in each class. All lessons were held according to the school schedule at the same time.

Children from the control group were engaged in the usual physical education program at school [32].

The purpose of school physical education is the formation of a versatile physically developed person who can actively use the values of physical culture to strengthen and maintain their health for a long time, optimize work activities, and organize active recreation. The realization of the purpose of the curriculum correlates with the solution of the following educational tasks:

1. Health promotion, posture improvement, prevention of flat feet, promotion of harmonious physical, moral, and social development as well as successful learning;
2. Formation of initial self-regulation skills through physical culture;
3. Mastering the school of movements;
4. Development of coordination abilities (accuracy of reproduction and differentiation of spatial, temporal, and power parameters of movements, balance, rhythm, speed and accuracy of response to signals, coordination of movements, orientation in space) and conditioning abilities (speed, speed-power, endurance, and flexibility);
5. Formation of basic knowledge about personal hygiene, daily routine, and the impact of physical exercise on health, performance, and development of physical abilities;
6. Development of ideas about the main sports, equipment, and equipment, compliance with safety regulations during classes;
7. Formation of an attitude to preserve and strengthen health, healthy and safe lifestyle skills;
8. Introduction to independent physical exercises, outdoor games, their use in free time based on the formation of interests in certain types of motor activity and identification of predisposition to certain sports;
9. Education of discipline, friendly attitude to comrades, honesty, responsiveness, courage during physical exercises, assistance in the development of mental processes (representation, memory, thinking, etc.) in the course of motor activity.

The children from the Experimental group were engaged in the same program, additionally, at the end of the main part of the lesson they performed a "Long run".

The structure of classes was the same, however, in the Experimental group the density of classes was higher, and classes were optimized. An example of such an activity is presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Example of a physical education lesson in the 3rd grade

Table 2 shows that the children from the Experimental Group performed all the same tasks as the children from the Control group, but slightly less in time, which allowed us to allocate part of the total duration of the lesson (40 minutes) of the time in the lesson to perform a "Long run" (6 minutes) at the end of the main part of the lesson.

Several important points should be noted:

1. General endurance should be developed at the end of the main part of the lesson since at the beginning of the lesson a long run will tire students and their concentration for further work in the classroom. After prolonged work, even at the end of the lesson, a hitch is necessary [32].
2. The basis for the development of general endurance is aerobic work, therefore, if at some point the student stopped running, switched to walking, caught his breath, and continued running again, then this is quite natural.
3. The time range of 6 minutes was not chosen by chance, such aerobic and continuous work is optimal for children 9-10 years old. If you do aerobic work for less time, then there will be no effect from it, and if more, then children may not be able to cope with it. At the same time, the fact that schoolchildren need to master the school curriculum in physical culture is important [22, 26, 32].

Control tests

All students who took part in the study at the beginning and the end of the pedagogical experiment passed 2 control tests:

1. Overall endurance was assessed using the world-famous K. Cooper test [33]. As a rule, it takes place at a stadium or, as in our case, in an athletics arena with a length of 200 meters. In the middle and upper grades, the 12-minute K. Cooper test is used, however, in the lower grades, a time interval of 6 minutes is used. The meaning of the running test is very simple. It is necessary to run as much distance as possible in 6 minutes.

1. warm-up. Before the test, all the children had a warm-up lasting about 10-12 minutes to prepare them for the load. Intensive walking or relaxed running is used as a warm-up, as well as a set of regular exercises for all muscle groups, which necessarily includes several stretching exercises;
2. the Cooper test. After the warm-up, the test itself begins. 6 minutes are recorded on the stopwatch, during which the subjects must cover as much distance as possible. If the test participants move to a step, the stopwatch does not stop.
3. the result. After 6 minutes, the distance that students overcome is measured in meters. At the end of the test, it is recommended to hold a hitch for 5 minutes, usually walking at a calm pace.

2. The attention indicators of schoolchildren were determined by the "Schulte Tables" test [34]. This is a fairly well-known test that is widely used in the psychodiagnostic of schoolchildren of different genders and ages. The test has a positive rating over time according to the criterion of validity and reliability.

Test for the development of attention of schoolchildren "Schulte Tables":

On the A4 sheet in front of the students, there is a table with numbers scattered in a different order from 1 to 25. It is necessary to look at the center of the table to cover the entire table with a glance, and as quickly as possible cross out the numbers in ascending order from 1 to 25. The task execution time is 40 seconds. The result – the more numbers the student managed to cross out, the higher his result.

Statistical processing of research results

All the students' results were entered into an Excel spreadsheet.

The average values in the groups and the standard deviation of the indicators are determined.

In addition to the Excel program, a special program Biostatistica-2022 was used, which determined the Student's T-test indicators.

The level of statistical significance was established at p<0.05.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

It should be noted that before the beginning of the pedagogical experiment, there were no statistically significant (reliable) differences between the studied indicators between all classes in both tests. After the end of the study, the results in each class changed differently (Table 3).

Table 3. Results of indicators of schoolchildren aged 9-10 in the Cooper test (6 minutes)

Table 3 shows that the indicators in the K. Cooper test improved in all classes. However, in the Control group, the improvement in indicators was statistically insignificant. Schoolchildren from the 3rd "A" class improved their performance by 6.8% (p>0.05), and children from the 3rd "B" class were able to improve their performance by 7.2% (p>0.05). Such results may indicate the effectiveness of the usual physical education work program at school. At the same time, in the Experimental Group, where the children performed a "Long Run", the indicators significantly improved. Schoolchildren from the 3rd "C" class improved their performance by 24.9% (p<0.05), and children from the 3rd "D" class exceeded the initial data by 18.9% (p<0.05). Such results may indicate the effectiveness of using Prolonged running in physical education classes at school for the development of endurance in schoolchildren 9-10 years old.

After the K. Cooper test, all students took a test that determines the level of attention development. The test results at the beginning and the end of the study are presented in Table 4.

Table 4. The results of the indicators of schoolchildren aged 9-10 years in the "Schulte Tables" test