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. 2025 Mar 25:13:1475618.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1475618. eCollection 2025.

The best exercises from top 20 by health-related indicators

Albertas Skurvydas  1 , Natalja Istomina  2 , Dovilė Valanciene  3 , Ruta Dadeliene  1 , Ieva Egle Jamontaite  1 , Ausra Lisinskiene  4 , Asta Sarkauskiene  5 , Daiva Majauskiene  1   4
Affiliations

The best exercises from top 20 by health-related indicators

Albertas Skurvydas et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: The study aimed to determine whether participation in professional sports, exercise in a sports/health center, or independent exercise (dependent variables) is associated with 11 health behavior-related indicators (independent variables) compared to having no exercise.

Methods: The survey involved 293 professional Lithuanian athletes, 2,120 who exercise independently or in a sports/health centre and perform at least one of the 20 most popular exercise types in Lithuania (hereafter referred to as "E-20"), and 3,400 who do not exercise. The participants were aged 18-74 years.

Results: The study uniquely examines a comprehensive range of 11 health-related indicators: body mass index, subjective health, depressed mood, stress, sedentary behavior, physical activity, sleep, alcohol consumption, smoking, overeating, and breakfast consumption. We examined whether these indicators differ between the three populations studied, whether they are associated with specific types of the E-20 exercises, and whether these patterns differ between men and women.

Conclusion: Our study indicates that participants who engaged in physical activity generally scored higher on various health-related scales compared to those who were inactive. These benefits include reductions in depressed mood, stress, body mass index, and binge eating, as well as improvements in the regularity of breakfast consumption, vigorous physical activity, moderate to vigorous physical activity, and sleep duration (notably in men).

Keywords: athletes; behavior indicators; exercise; health indicators; physical activity.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Subjective health, depressed mood, and stress in men (A,C,E) and women (B,D,F) in the E-20 groups. Structure of subjective health, depressed mood, and stress in men (G) and women (H). The data are expressed as the percentages of men and women who rated their health as excellent, did not experience any signs of depressed mood (non-depressed mood), and had the least amount of stress according to participation in the different types of exercise.
Figure 2
Figure 2
BMI in men (A,C) and women (B,D). Data for BMI (kg/m2) are shown in the top panels, and for the percentages of participants with a normal BMI (18.5–25 kg/m2) in the bottom panels. ECPT*- extreme conditioning program training. Energy expenditure during sleep, SB, LPA, MPA, VPA METs. SB – sedentary behavior, LPA – light-intensity physical activity, MPA – moderate-intensity physical activity, VPA – vigorous-intensity physical activity in men (E) and women (F). (G,H) Present the respective energy expenditure structure in percentages for men and women.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Smoking, alcohol consumption, overeating, and eating breakfast in men (A,C,E,G) and women (B,D,F,H) in the E-20 groups. Percentages of men (I) and women (J) who do not smoke (non-smoking), do not consume alcohol (non-drinking), do not overeat (non-overeating), and eat breakfast in women and men in the E-20 groups ECPT*- extreme conditioning program training.
Figure 4
Figure 4
General rankings of men (A) and women (B) of the E-20 groups and the group that does not exercise (Untrained) ECPT*- extreme conditioning program training.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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