Abstract

Background:

Poor flexibility is a predictor of reduced physical activity. The association between trunk flexibility and cardiovascular risk factors (CVRFs) is not well understood.

Objective:

To identify the prevalence of CVRFs and their association with trunk flexibility in individuals participating in a community-based health education program.

Methods:

Volunteers (51 men, 48 women) aged 20-85 years old, participants in a community-based health education program in the city of Santo Antônio de Goiás, Brazil, were selected for this study. Anthropometric measures including body mass, height, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and waist/height ratio (WHtR) were evaluated. Physical activity level was evaluated based on leisure activity participation, and trunk flexibility was evaluated by the sit and reach test. Data distribution was assessed using the Shapiro-Wilk test; Pearson’s chi-square or Fisher’s exact and Student t tests were performed for comparisons. To analyze the association between trunk flexibility and concomitant CVRFs, Spearman’s correlation test and linear regression were employed. Statistical significance was defined as p < 0.05.

Results:

7.2% of the volunteers had no CVRF, 10.3% had only one CVRF and 82.5% had two or more CVRFs, with no differences between sexes. Increased abdominal adiposity, as assessed by WHtR (p = 0.0097), and systemic arterial hypertension (p = 0.0003) were the most prevalent CVRFs, with differences between age groups. A strong negative correlation was found between mean trunk flexibility and the number of concomitant CVRFs (r = -0.96, p < 0.0028).

Conclusion:

The strong negative correlation between trunk flexibility and concomitant CVRF indicates an increased risk for cardiovascular events. Therefore, trunk flexibility measurement may be an additional tool for health promotion and prevention of cardiovascular and associated diseases in community health programs.

BACKGROUND: Physical exercise plays a role in health-promotion policies and its prescription should be scientifically based. Flexibility is one of the major components of health-related and performance-related physical fitness, and is defined as the maximum physiological passive range of motion of a given joint movement. According to its specificity, the assessment of flexibility should, ideally, incorporate multiple movements. Introduced in 1980 and with redesigned evaluation maps published in 1986, Flexitest consists of the assessment of mobility with the use of a scale from 0 to 4. By adding the individual results of the 20 joint movements assessed, it is possible to obtain a global score called Flexindex. OBJECTIVE: To present Flexitest updated normative values. METHODS: Data were obtained from 4711 non-athlete subjects (2943 men and 1768 women) with age ranging from 5 to 91 years, and were collected by experienced raters. Approximately 70% of the data were collected by the author of the method himself. RESULTS: Considering the data heteroscedasticity and non-parametric distribution, we chose to use age and gender-percentile tables. Flexindex decreases with age and the median results for females are higher than for males of the same age since childhood. This trend becomes stronger with physical development and, later, with the aging process. CONCLUSION: these normative data contribute to a better knowledge of the flexibility behavior with age and gender and will be useful for professionals who assess flexibility in their professional practice.