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Special Issue "Editorial Board Members' Collection Series: Physical Activity and Health"

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Guest Editor

Exercise & Sport Nutrition Laboratory, Human Clinical Research Facility, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA
Interests: exercise physiology; sports nutrition; performance enhancement; weight loss; women's health
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Yi-Sub Kwak

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Department of Physical Education, University of Dong-Eui, 995 Eomgwangno, Busanjin-gu, Busan 471, Republic of Korea
Interests: exercise physiology; immunology; obesity; exercise; nutrition; physical allergy; metabolic syndrome; dance-intervention

Dr. Heidi K. Ortmeyer

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Division of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA
Interests: companion animal; human-animal interaction; heart rate variability; physical activity; older Veterans; skeletal muscle lipoprotein lipase; skeletal muscle glycogen synthase; mitochondrial enzyme activities; insulin resistance; insulin action

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce this Collection entitled “Editorial Board Members' Collection Series: Physical Activity and Health”. This issue will be a collection of papers from researchers invited by the Editorial Board Members. The aim is to provide a venue for networking and communication between IJERPH and scholars in the field of modeling disease risk and outcomes. All papers will be fully open access upon publication after peer review.

Prof. Dr. Richard B. Kreider
Dr. Yi-Sub Kwak
Dr. Heidi K. Ortmeyer
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

exercise physiology
sports nutrition
performance enhancement
weight loss
obesity
exercise
nutrition
physical activity
sport and health

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

Open AccessArticle

Implementation of a Community-Based Mind–Body (Tae-Bo) Physical Activity Programme on Health-Related Physical Fitness in Rural Black Overweight and Obese Women with Manifest Risk Factors for Multimorbidity

and

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20(15), 6463; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20156463 - 27 Jul 2023

Viewed by 682

Abstract

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of death globally, particularly impacting low- and middle-income countries and rural dwellers. Therefore, this programme aimed to investigate if a community-based mind–body PA programme implemented in a low-resource setting could improve health-related physical fitness outcomes. Black overweight or obese adult women (25 ± 4.7 years) with a body mass index (BMI) > 25 kg·m⁻² recruited from a rural settlement in South Africa with manifest risk factors for multimorbidity were assigned to a 10-week waiting-to-treat non-exercising control group (n = 65) or a community-based mind–body programme (n = 60) consisting of 45–60 min, thrice-weekly Tae-Bo. The intervention resulted in significant (p ≤ 0.05) improvements in body weight (p = 0.043), BMI (p = 0.037), and waist (p = 0.031) and hip circumferences (p = 0.040). Flexibility was found to be significantly increased at mid- and post-programme (p = 0.033 and p = 0.025, respectively) as was static balance (mid: p = 0.022; post: p = 0.019), hand grip strength (mid: p = 0.034; post: p = 0.029), sit-up performance (mid: p = 0.021; post: p = 0.018), and cardiorespiratory endurance (mid: p = 0.017; post: p = 0.011). No significant change was found in sum of skinfolds following the programme (p = 0.057). Such a community-based mind–body programme presents an opportunity to level health inequalities and positively improve health-related physical fitness in low-resource communities irrespective of the underlying barriers to participation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Editorial Board Members' Collection Series: Physical Activity and Health)

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Open AccessArticle

Profiling Physical Fitness of Physical Education Majors Using Unsupervised Machine Learning

Diego A. Bonilla

Isabel A. Sánchez-Rojas

Darío Mendoza-Romero

Yurany Moreno

Jana Kočí

Luis M. Gómez-Miranda

Daniel Rojas-Valverde

Jorge L. Petro

and

Richard B. Kreider

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20(1), 146; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20010146 - 22 Dec 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1660

Abstract

The academic curriculum has shown to promote sedentary behavior in college students. This study aimed to profile the physical fitness of physical education majors using unsupervised machine learning and to identify the differences between sexes, academic years, socioeconomic strata, and the generated profiles. A total of 542 healthy and physically active students (445 males, 97 females; 19.8 [2.2] years; 66.0 [10.3] kg; 169.5 [7.8] cm) participated in this cross-sectional study. Their indirect VO_2max (Cooper and Shuttle-Run 20 m tests), lower-limb power (horizontal jump), sprint (30 m), agility (shuttle run), and flexibility (sit-and-reach) were assessed. The participants were profiled using clustering algorithms after setting the optimal number of clusters through an internal validation using R packages. Non-parametric tests were used to identify the differences (p < 0.05). The higher percentage of the population were freshmen (51.4%) and middle-income (64.0%) students. Seniors and juniors showed a better physical fitness than first-year students. No significant differences were found between their socioeconomic strata (p > 0.05). Two profiles were identified using hierarchical clustering (Cluster 1 = 318 vs. Cluster 2 = 224). The matching analysis revealed that physical fitness explained the variation in the data, with Cluster 2 as a sex-independent and more physically fit group. All variables differed significantly between the sexes (except the body mass index [p = 0.218]) and the generated profiles (except stature [p = 0.559] and flexibility [p = 0.115]). A multidimensional analysis showed that the body mass, cardiorespiratory fitness, and agility contributed the most to the data variation so that they can be used as profiling variables. This profiling method accurately identified the relevant variables to reinforce exercise recommendations in a low physical performance and overweight majors. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Editorial Board Members' Collection Series: Physical Activity and Health)

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