School flexibility

The present study aimed to analyze research on the levels of flexibility of school children and adolescents. This is a literature review conducted in the Google Academic database, through the keywords: physical fitness, health of schoolchildren and flexibility, in the period from 2006 to 2015. In the literature found (16 articles) the schoolchildren had increasing average values of height and body mass throughout the ages. Moreover, flexibility showed a tendency to decline over the ages in both genders. This review confirmed that the flexibility shows to be an important component of the physical fitness related to health indicators of children and adolescents. However, in the adult phase, schoolchildren become less active and sedentary, consequently decreasing the body flexibility, thus harming their health. It is expected that the information gathered about the characteristics of the physical quality of schoolchildren’s flexibility will provide a better understanding of the relationship between the growth during the school phase and the changes of this physical quality, increasing the knowledge of educators in the school and scientific areas about the health condition of students.