Hand grip strength in boys and girls from summer school camps in Spain, 1900–1925. A comparison with 21st century data

Abstract

Objectives The Spanish National Pedagogic Museum (Museo Pedagógico Nacional, MPN), founded by La Institución Libre de Enseñanza, organized the first summer school camps in Spain and their initiative was followed by other institutions in this country. MPN prepared anthropological forms for those sojourns, which included information about both metric and physiological measurements of the schoolchildren. The aim of the current work is to analyze hand grip strength data and to compare them with recent values.

Methods The initial sample included 2418 schoolchildren from 6 to 16 years old (1467 males, 951 females) attending the camps, but after preliminary analyses, the study was restricted to 1073 boys and 818 girls in the 1900–1925 interval. Three time periods were established and 13 categories of height at camp entry, every 5 cm. Normality tests were run as well as contrasts of means, and both average values and percentiles were calculated for hand grip strength in both hands, as a function of age and height categories.

Results The 1900–1925 interval was chosen since there were no significant differences among hand grip data within that period. Results show that children attending the camps had dynamometry values in both hands well below the current ones, both with reference to their height and to their age.

Conclusions Camp attendees displayed very low values of height and hand grip strength in both hands. Both are significantly lower than contemporary values, manifesting a secular effect.