Effects of specialized physical education and additional aerobic training on aerobic endurance of police students

Abstract

Aim. The aim of this study was to investigate if the SPE classes were sufficient to improve the police students' aerobic endurance over the period of 12 weeks; and to investigate if two additional aerobic trainings per week may have an effect on the students' aerobic endurance. Materials and Methods. An initial and final estimated maximal oxygen consumption of 233 (♀87 and ♂146) police students were assessed at the begging and after 12 weeks of training. All participants were performing SPE classes as part of the curriculum, while experimental groups (♀39 and ♂81) conducted two additional trainings for aerobic endurance. A repeated-measure analysis of variance was used to analyze the effects of the treatments and the differences between the treatments. Results. The SPE with two additional aerobic endurance trainings significantly improved students' aerobic endurance in both sexes (14 %, p < 0.01). Two aerobic trainings alone had large effects on aerobic endurance female (11.66 %, p < 0.01) and male (12.15 %, p < 0.01) police students. Conclusions. Relatively simple aerobic training, applied two times per week, could provide meaningful changes in aerobic endurance. Practitioners could use the period while police students are at the university to educate them on how to organize and conduct basic physical training on their own.