The role of fitness programmes in reducing overweight in secondary school students

From primary school onwards, the pupil is filled with information from all directions (school, family, media, internet.), about how he should be as an individual, what should do, what should know or what is most important for him as a human being. Sometimes in school there is no emphasis on information showing children the importance of physical exercise on their development, on their biological potential or on the influence of physical effort and games on normal psychomotor and biological development. All these aspects should be of concern to us in order to develop in pupils the thinking, practicality, responsibility, sociability, communication, qualities of will, courage and perseverance, fairness and respect, bodily aesthetics and moral conduct, qualities necessary for the future adult, integrated and adapted to the requirements of modern education. Specialists in the psycho-pedagogical field have unanimously accepted that physical education, regardless of the level of education at which it is taught, plays a fundamental role in the process of formation and development of the child/adolescent's personality, and the formative biological, motor, psychological and social values of this discipline are recognized. The general aim of our research is to determine the extent to which exercise alone contributes to reducing the effects of obesity in secondary school children. The research is of an experimental type, carried out in several stages, on a sample of 24 overweight male and female students, aged between 10 and 14 years old, from "Vasile Alecsandri" National High School and "George Bacovia" Secondary School, Bacau, Romania. At the first stage of the research, during the period 01.09.2021 - 01.11.2021, the sample and the locations where the extracurricular fitness activities will take place were identified and the measurements of anthropometric indicators and psychomotor test sets necessary to investigate the level of physical fitness, respectively the value of its components in the subjects included in the research were selected. The second phase of the research were applied the testing method and the pedagogical experiment, carried out between November 2021 and May 2022, aimed to apply the training program on the sample identified in the first phase, with the realization of the initial (November 2021) and final (May 2022) tests. In our research we designed a physical training program in which means of action from various sports branches were used, adapted to the specific age of the pupils of the secondary school classes. The main results of the research at this stage refer to the evaluation of the impact of the training program applied to the experimental group, reflected in the evolution of anthropometric indicators measurements in the subjects included in the research.