ASSESSMENT OF UPPER BODY STRENGTH IN THE ROMANIAN YOUNG POPULATION

We all know that general fitness is a reliable indicator for the health of young people and a predictor of health in later life, which is a main concern for The Council of Europe. There are several test batteries for the assessment of physical fitness, but in the current literature, we have not found a database for upper body strength in the population aged 19-29 years. This paper aims, on the one hand, to investigate an important sample of the Romanian population to find out the level of musculoskeletal fitness and, on the other hand, to create a database for the segment of population aged 19-29 years to which future studies in the field can relate or compare. In order to determine the level of upper body strength, a component of musculoskeletal fitness, we applied the modified push-ups from ALPHA-FIT Test Battery for Adults. The experiment was conducted for a period of five months, between 15.10.2016-15.02.2017, on a group of 620 subjects, 350 males (56.77%) and 268 females (43.23%) aged 19 to 29 years, of Romanian nationality, students at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. To analyse the data obtained for male and female subjects, we divided the results into 4 quartiles (poorest quartile, second quartile, third quartile, best quartile), according to the Alpha test table of reference values. (C) 2018 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.UK