ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Bone Research
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2025.1598344
This article is part of the Research TopicBone Health and Development in Children and Adolescents: Volume IIView all 13 articles
Longitudinal effects of childhood recreational gymnastics participation on bone development: The Young Recreational Gymnast Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Kinesiology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
- 2Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Purpose: Previous research in the young recreational gymnast study (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014) found bone benefits from involvement in recreational gymnastics during young childhood. The purpose of this study was to identify any longitudinal effects of recreational gymnastics exposure during childhood on adolescent bone health.For the present analysis, longitudinal data was available from 118 participants (66 female; 33 gymnasts) of the original 178 who were recruited and assessed on between 1 and 5 measurement occasions (median 3) between 2008 and 2020. Peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT) scans were completed at both the distal and shaft sites of their non-dominant radius and tibia. Multilevel random effects models were constructed to assess differences in the development of bone content, density, and estimated bone strength between those exposed and not exposed to recreational gymnastics whilst controlling for biological age, sex, body weight, limb length, and physical activity.Results: Individuals who were exposed to recreational gymnastics during childhood were found to have greater total area, total content, bone strength index, trabecular area, trabecular content, and trabecular density at the distal radius compared to physically active controls. There were no differences at the radial shaft, distal tibia, or tibia shaft.Involvement in childhood recreational gymnastics may provide long-term benefit at the distal radius as individuals enter young adulthood.
Keywords: Recreational gymnastics, Bone health, Peripheral quantitative computed tomography, physical activity, childhood, adolescence
Received: 23 Mar 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Erlandson, Chapelski, Adam, Zaluski and Baxter-Jones. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Marta Erlandson, College of Kinesiology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, S7N 5B2, Saskatchewan, Canada
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.