THE IMPACT OF MOVEMENT GAMES ON MALE PHYSICAL FITNESS IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION COURSES AT SAIGON UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM

: Movement games not only help students improve their general fitness but also help increase excitement during exercise. However, the impact of movement games on physical development has not been determined, especially for non-sports majors. The purpose of this study was to find out the impact of movement games on male physical fitness in Physical Education courses. 51 healthy male student volunteers were randomly divided into 3 groups (15w, 7w, and control). Movement games were selected and applied to the experimental group (15w and 7w), while the control group did not apply movement games and practice according to the preset 15-week training program. The results in this study indicated that the application of MG for male students at Saigon University during PE courses had a positive way to enhance general physical fitness (i.e., the explosive power of the legs, agility, speed, and maximal aerobic speed). Future studies should focus on the impact in the time of movement games application, specific characteristics to different schools, as well as the evolution of physical development at each age when using the movement games.


Introduction
The Sports Authority of Vietnam (SAV, 2018) indicated that the number of people who practice sports regularly in Vietnam might reach approximately 34%, while the number of families who practice sports only reached 24.5% in 2019.According to a survey conducted by experts from Stanford, Vietnam was one of the most sedentary countries in the world.Only about 1/7 of people participated in sports activities for more than 30 minutes a day, and 30% of adults lacked physical activity.Thus, there were millions of people who had not yet participated in sports, and the risk of contracting noncommunicable diseases, especially cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes, included the reason in lacking of understanding about nutrition as well.Therefore, it was necessary to change the approach in the organization of physical education (PE) to help students participate more in school sports activities, while movement games were a form of play, both as a means for comprehensive physical education and to attract practitioners to participate in playing and perfecting motor skills (Lam et al., 1996), great for physical development (Minh, 2007).
Besides, movement games also created conditions for physical development, contributed to raising awareness, and developed language and imagination (Tho, 2010).The content of the movement games was wide, and diverse and reflected the phenomena of natural and social life taking place daily and close to human life (Lam & Cuong, 2005).A special feature of the movement games was that they might be organized anywhere, anytime, less facilities and restrictions.The role of the teacher was to exploit the situations and available training courses/equipment to encourage students to play together (Tri, 1999), individual activities combined with group activities flexibly to help learners develop their physical strength, intelligence, and personality.
Moreover, Tuan (2019) indicated that students often have limited satisfaction and learning motivation when participating in PE classes at school.The reason might come from the boredom of repetitive, heavy physical exercises, which tend to be pedagogical and technical rather than enhancing the "kinesthetic" experience of learners, which is contrary to the benefits obtained from movement games.The excitement is warmed up during exercise, for example, which was considered moderate and lacking in Physical Education courses.Therefore, the purpose of this study was to clarify the application of movement games to improve general fitness in male students after 15 weeks of participating in the physical education courses at Saigon University.Therefore, there are further studies to be able to better assess the influence of motor games on physical development in learners.

Participants
The volunteer and selected participants were 51 healthy male students who attended the PE program at Saigon University.All of the participants joined the training in 15 weeks (equivalent to one semester).17 male students were chosen for the 15-week experiment training with the application of movement games (15w), another 17 male students took the same experiment for the last 7 weeks (7w), and the remaining 17 male students were in the 15-week training without using movement games (the control group or C).
None of the participants had any physical problems, smoking, alcohol use, or taking any medication.To ensure that the experimental process was similar, both the experimental and control groups must have the same training time.Thus, it stipulated that the track & field classes would be selected in the morning to limit the impact of hot weather during the experiment.

Design
Four fitness tests were chosen to determine the physical fitness of Saigon University students, such as a standing long jump test (the explosive power of the legs), 4x10m Shuttle run test (agility), 30m sprint test (speed), and 5-min running field test (maximal aerobic speed-MAS).These tests were suitable to evaluate the fitness of amateur athletes by the Ministry of Education & Training (Ministry of Education & Training, 2008) and also suited to assess general fitness in Physical Education courses at Saigon University (Tuan & Son, 2017).

Procedures
Two weeks before the experiment, each participant answered a brief baseline questionnaire about their personal information, training habits, and sport-related injury history.Besides, all participants got acquainted with the fitness tests and how to implement them.They were informed of the screening process before agreeing to participate in writing.All participants were asked to continue their daily diet and physical activity.
Thereafter, all participants underwent a 15-week training program in PE courses with the same conditions, duration, and facility usage.PE courses attended morning (from 7.00 to 8.40 a.m.) on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, corresponding to each group as 15w, 7w, and C, respectively (one time per week) in the 2021-2022 academic year.The 7th week was the mid-term examination and the 15th week was the final exam.The applicable movement games (MG) in each group are described in Figure 1.Besides, PE courses at Saigon University conducted one session per week (100 minutes/session).The application of MG in one session is described in Table 1.

Statistical analysis
All data were expressed as mean and standard deviation values (mean±SD).Data collections were analyzed by using SPSS for Windows version 24.One-way ANOVA was used to determine the differences among three groups (15w, 7w, and C).A p-value of less than 0.05 was determined to be a significant difference.

Participants' characteristics
The characteristics of the study are described in Table 1.

The selection of the movement games to improve general physical fitness for male students in physical education courses at Saigon University
Based on the literature and many former studies such as Xidirov (2021), Le Bich Ngoc, Le Thi Nhung (2011), Thao (2018), Nguyet (2019), Tan (2019), Hoa (2021), Binh (2021), etc. Besides, based on the characteristics of participants, and features of physical education courses at Saigon University, the study complied 20 movement games to improve the general physical fitness of male students in PE courses at Saigon University (more details are shown in Table 3).After that, the study conducted interviews with experts to select suitable movement games for male students in PE courses.A 3-level rating was used (e.g., Agree -Rarely -Disagree).Thus, the fewer ratios respondents had, the fewer the workouts used.The results of the expert interviews are presented in Table 3.

Evaluating the effectiveness after the application of the movement games for male students in physical education courses at Saigon University
Results before and after the application of the movement games for male students in PE courses at Saigon University are presented in Table 4 and Table 5.   4 and Table 5 indicated that there were significant differences among the three groups in each evaluation test.
According to Dravniece (2015), MG used corresponding to the sport would increase learners' interest and joy in sports and help learners quickly acquire higher-level skills.The game had the power to attract learners and participants to play and perform it voluntarily, creating a joyful, healthy, and exciting atmosphere, sometimes forgetting even the fatigue.MG was also a means of entertainment, a form of active rest, and a cultural activity that contributed to improving people's spiritual lives, helping learners experience.It could be educating the life skills, personality development, have the opportunity to reveal and develop the necessary qualities and abilities to apply in daily life (Thuan, 2018).Besides, Xidirov (2021) showed that the application of MG might increase learners' speed, agility, power, weight control, endurance muscle development, etc.These results were almost similar to the results obtained in our study.
The limitation of this study was that the experiment was only conducted in one school, only on a small group of male students who did not specialize in sports and did not have the habit of regularly exercising.The process of organizing an MG, should be carried out through the following steps: (1) select a game and compile it into an organizational lesson plan -instructions, (2) prepare facilities and locations to organize the game, (3) organize the team for students to play, (4) introduce and explain the game, and (5) control the game.Therefore, to play an MG effectively required meticulous preparation from the teacher and enthusiasm from the students.Introducing and explaining attractive games, attracting attention, and encouraging students to participate in playing is truly the art of the teacher.According to the experience of many educators, when letting students play a new game, they usually let them try it one to two or three times.After each time, the teacher needs to comment and add additional rules for them to master.rules, then let them play officially and compete.Therefore, for MG to be effective, it needs to be played many times, so that students can clearly understand and become proficient in how to play, thereby making students actively participate in MG, thereby achieving high efficiency.This explains the results of our study that there were differences in general physical development at different periods of game application (i.e., 7 weeks vs. 15 weeks experiment).

Conclusion
In short, the results in this study indicated that the application of MG for male students at Saigon University during PE courses had a positive way to enhance general physical fitness (i.e., the explosive power of the legs, agility, speed, and maximal aerobic speed).Future studies should focus on the impact in the time of movement games application, specific characteristics to different schools, as well as the evolution of physical development at each age when using the movement games.Creative Commons licensing terms Authors will retain the copyright of their published articles agreeing that a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) terms will be applied to their work.Under the terms of this license, no permission is required from the author(s) or publisher for members of the community to copy, distribute, transmit or adapt the article content, providing a proper, prominent and unambiguous attribution to the authors in a manner that makes clear that the materials are being reused under permission of a Creative Commons License.Views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this research article are views, opinions and conclusions of the author(s).Open Access Publishing Group and European Journal of Physical Education and Sport Science shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability caused in relation to/arising out of conflict of interests, copyright violations and inappropriate or inaccurate use of any kind content related or integrated on the research work.All the published works are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Research design of the study

Table 1 :
The application of movement games in Physical Education courses * Aerobic training, sprint exercises, exercises with bare hands, agility, or resistance training.

Table 4 :
Mean values among three groups after the application of movement games

Table 5 :
Mean differences after the application of movement among three groups Wilk index, SS: Sum of Squares, * Significant differences at the level 0.001.
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