CORRELATION BETWEEN THE CARDIORESPIRATORY FITNESS LEVEL AND HABITUAL PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN BRAZILIAN AIR FORCE RECRUITS

Cardiorespiratory fitness is the ability to maintain moderate or high-intensity efforts for long periods of time and is highly related to physical activity habits and fitness levels. Analyzing habitual physical activity in military personnel and its relationship with cardiorespiratory fitness is consequently fundamental. Thus, the objective of this study was to verify the correlation between the cardiorespiratory fitness level and habitual physical activity in Brazilian Air Force recruits. The sample consisted of 86 recruits in the final phase of the soldier training course. Data was collected using the 12-minute cardiorespiratory fitness test and the Baecke questionnaire validated for the Portuguese language to assess the practice of habitual physical activity. Descriptive statistics were used for sample characterization and exploratory analysis. The distribution of data normality was analyzed using the Shapiro-Wilk test, followed by Pearson’s correlation test and the Mann-Whitney U test to compare the groups with lower and higher cardiorespiratory fitness. The significance level of p ≤ 0.05 was adopted. According to the results, 63.9% of the sample had satisfactory cardiorespiratory fitness levels (good and excellent). No significant correlations were observed between cardiorespiratory fitness and habitual physical activity indices, except for the physical exercise/sports index (p= 0.05). It was found that only the Body Mass Index showed a difference (p= 0.017, Effect Size= 0.637) between the cardiorespiratory fitness groups. It is concluded that most military recruits have adequate cardiorespiratory fitness levels, but these are not influenced by the habitual practice of physical activity. Article visualizations