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Have you ever wondered how children have the energy to run around all day? Researchers have found the answer:聽their muscles resist fatigue in the same way as elite endurance athletes.

Researchers from and the in France tested three groups 鈥� boys aged 8 to 12, untrained adults and endurance athletes 鈥� to see how each recovered from strenuous physical activity.

They found that the young boys鈥� muscles were very resistant to fatigue during maximal cycling exercise at a level comparable to the endurance athletes. They also recovered quickly from the high-intensity exercise.

Professor Tony Blazevich from ECU鈥檚 School of Medical and Health Sciences said the children in the study actually recovered from high-intensity exercise faster than the endurance athletes.

鈥淢ost of us probably remember as children running around outside for hours and hours and then waking up the next day and doing it again, yet if we tried to do the same thing as adults we would be absolutely shattered,鈥� he said.

鈥淥ne way the children are able to have such good endurance is that they produce more of their energy aerobically compared to adults. Aerobic metabolism uses oxygen drawn from the blood to produce energy, and unlike anaerobic metabolism doesn鈥檛 produce lactate, which causes muscle fatigue.

鈥淎dditionally, the children were able to remove the lactate from their muscles faster than even the trained endurance athletes, allowing them to recover very quickly.鈥�

Young athletes reaching their full potential

Professor Blazevich said the findings were useful for parents who wish to develop their child鈥檚 athletic potential.

鈥淥ur study shows that muscle endurance is often very good in children, so it might be better to focus on other areas of fitness such as their sports technique, sprint speed or muscle strength. This may help to optimise physical training in children, so that they perform better and enjoy sports more,鈥� he said.

Implications for new treatments

The study leader, Associate Professor in Exercise Physiology S茅bastien Ratel from , said the research also sheds light on how the risk of developing diseases such as diabetes increases as we age.

鈥淲ith the rise in diseases related to physical inactivity, it is helpful to understand the physiological changes with growth that might contribute to the risk of disease,鈥� he said.

鈥淥ur research indicates that aerobic fitness, at least at the muscle level, decreases significantly as children move into adulthood, which is around the time increases in diseases such as diabetes occur.

鈥淚t will be interesting in future research to determine whether the muscular changes we have observed are directly related to disease risk. At least our results might provide motivation for practitioners to maintain muscle fitness as children grow up; it seems that being a child might be healthy for us.鈥�

The study, 鈥楳etabolic and fatigue profiles are comparable between prepubertal children and well-trained adult endurance athletes鈥�, was published recently in聽.

Image credit: 漏stock.adobe.com/au/Monkey Business