Four Minutes of Sprint Interval Training Had No Acute Effect on Improving Alertness, Mood, and Memory of Female Primary School Children and Secondary School Adolescents: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

We investigated whether a 4-min sprint interval training (SIT) protocol had an acute effect (15 min after) on improving alertness, mood, and memory recall in female students. Sixty-three children and 131 adolescents were randomly assigned to either a SIT or control (CON) group by the class Physical Education (PE) teachers. The SIT intervention was delivered twice a week for 3 weeks. SIT participants performed three, 20-s ‘all-out’ effort sprints interspersed with 60-s intervals of walking while CON group sat down and rested. PE lessons were arranged such that the first two sessions were to familiarise participants with the SIT protocol leading to acute assessments conducted on the third session. On that occasion, both groups rated their alertness and mood on a single-item hedonic scale and underwent an adapted memory recall test. The same assessments were administered to both groups fifteen minutes after delivery of SIT intervention. A 4-min SIT involving three, 20 s ‘all-out’ effort intensity sprints did not have an acute main effect on improving alertness, mood and, memory recall in female children (ηp2 = 0.009) and adolescents (ηp2 = 0.012). Students’ exercise adherence and feedback from PE teachers are indicatives of the potential scalability of incorporating SIT into PE programmes. Different work-to-rest ratios could be used in future studies.