Flexibility in Brazilian children and adolescents: a systematic review

Abstract Flexibility is a health-related physical fitness component that has its importance related to the maintenance of functional independence and achievement of activities of the daily living. This systematic review aims to analyze the existing evidence in the literature regarding physical capacity flexibility in Brazilian children and adolescents. Searches were conducted in the Virtual Health Library, Scientific Electronic Library Online, Sportdiscus databases through the EBSCOhost and Pubmed platform. There were 89,553 articles, of which 69,197 were excluded for duplicity, 20,124 for the title, 160 for the abstract, 56 after a full analysis of the article, remaining 16 articles for the qualitative analysis. Of these, from the reading of references, 57 titles partially eligible for the review were identified, and after the application of the eligibility criteria, there were only 18 for the qualitative analysis. Of the 34 studies included for the qualitative analysis, 25 studies were excluded and nine were included in the review. All articles presented the cross-sectional design and used the sit-and-reach test to assess flexibility. It was evidenced that: a) flexibility has been treated as co-adjuvant in studies with children and adolescents; b) although females have absolute flexibility values greater than the opposite sex, males have higher frequency of subjects that meet the health classification criteria in this variable; c) there is greater prevalence of the use of FITNESSGRAM and PROESP-BR reference standards.摘要：柔韧性（Flexibility）是与健康相关的身体素质组成部分，其重要性与维持功能独立性及完成日常活动紧密相关。本系统综述旨在分析巴西儿童与青少年身体素质中柔韧性相关的现有文献证据。研究通过EBSCOhost与Pubmed平台，在虚拟健康图书馆（Virtual Health Library）、在线科学电子图书馆（Scientific Electronic Library Online）以及Sportdiscus数据库中开展检索。初检共获取89553篇文献，其中69197篇因重复被排除，20124篇因标题不符合纳入标准被排除，160篇因摘要不符合要求被排除，56篇经全文分析后被排除，最终剩余16篇用于初步定性分析。经参考文献回溯，又识别出57篇部分符合综述纳入标准的文献；在应用纳入排除标准后，仅余18篇进入定性分析环节。本项定性分析涉及的34项研究中，25项被排除，最终9项被纳入本综述。所有纳入文献均采用横断面研究设计（cross-sectional design），并使用坐位体前屈测试（sit-and-reach test）评估柔韧性水平。研究结果显示：a）在针对儿童与青少年的研究中，柔韧性常被作为辅助指标进行探讨；b）尽管女性的绝对柔韧性数值高于男性，但符合该变量健康分类标准的受试者占比更高的却是男性群体；c）当前研究中最常用的参考标准为FITNESSGRAM与PROESP-BR。