- What is this study about?
This study is about how children get stronger with resistance exercise. It will look at many different ways people get stronger with resistance exercise, such as neural and muscle adaptations. This work is important because it will help inform guidelines for prescribing exercise for youths, which is currently primarily based on adult research.
- Who can participate?
Healthy children 8-11 years old (male or female), who do not perform resistance exercise or competitive athletic training more than 2x/week. Children who have consumed any medications in the past year which may affect muscle function, have any prior injuries or medical diagnoses associated with altered muscular function, and/or have had an injury in the past 6 months that would limit the movements required for the training and assessment protocols, will not be able to participate in the study.
- What is involved?
Should your child choose to participate, they will be asked to perform twice-weekly supervised resistance training at the Brock University BFit Centre (training group) OR continue to perform their regular physical activity (control group) for 12 weeks. Additionally, your child will visit the Applied Physiology/Sympathetic Neurocirculatory Regulation Laboratories at Brock University a total of eight times for testing sessions before, during, and after the 12-week intervention. During these laboratory sessions we will perform various measures (e.g., height, weight), as well as test your child’s muscle and cardiovascular function.
- What do individual’s get for participating?
Participants will gain personal and general knowledge about the human body including body composition and muscle strength. If included in the training group, your child will experience the beneficial effects or resistance training, which has previously been shown to be safe and effective at increasing muscle and bone strength in children. All participants will receive a $15 honorarium (cash or gift card) for each of the 8 testing sessions in the study. Further, the training group will receive a $5 honorarium (cash or gift card) for each of the training sessions they attend. This research will benefit the scientific community by providing a better understanding of how resistance exercise affects children.
