Santos et al. 2014 (FitnessGram)
About this reference
Santos et al. report weighted, smoothed P5-P95 values for curl-ups, push-ups, 20m shuttle-run laps, and left- and right-leg modified back-saver sit-and-reach using FITNESSGRAM Test Battery v8.0 procedures. Decimal age was calculated from birth and measurement dates; each labelled year is centred on that age (for example, age 10 spans 9.50-10.49). The nationally representative 2008 school sample was weighted to the Portuguese youth population, and centile curves were fitted with Cole's LMS method.
Known limitations
- Portuguese sample only; values may not generalise to youth in other countries or to later cohorts.
- The 2008 cross-sectional design describes differences between age groups, not individual development over time.
- Biological maturity was not assessed, even though growth and maturation can affect youth fitness performance.
- The curl-up and right-leg reach tables contain smoothed upper centiles above current official FitnessGram maximum scores. The paper does not explain whether research administration, scoring-policy differences, or LMS smoothing accounts for this.
- The authors state that further research is needed before treating these normative percentiles as health-related thresholds.