The COVID-19 pandemic brought forth new challenges to the lifestyles of people in every strata of society. Particularly, as a result of the lockdown and consequent forced curtailment of outdoor activity, even children who were hitherto accustomed to an active lifestyle witnessed health related fitness and motor fitness issues, brought about by a sedentary lifestyle. Under this scenario, Calisthenics would be an excellent fitness regime that may be performed by these children notwithstanding pandemic-related constraints like remaining indoors, and non-availability of gyms. In this study, we have analyzed whether calisthenics exercise caused improvements in selected motor fitness variable among slum boys during Covid-19. Accordingly, twenty slum boys (n=20) with ages ranging between 12 to 15 years, were selected from Chennai, Tamil Nadu. They were classified at random in two equal groups of 10 subjects each (n=10). Group - I (Experimental Group) underwent Calisthenics Exercise (CE) thrice a week for six weeks, while the Group – II (Control group, CG), did not participate in any kind of training programme apart from their regular daily activities. The selected motor fitness variable such as speed and agility were measured by 50-yard Run and Shuttle Run respectively for all the subjects, before and after the training period. The collected data was analysed statistically through analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to find whether significance difference existed. The results of the study showed that there was a significant improvement in the selected motor fitness variables of the slum boys, as a result of performing CE.

KEYWORDS: Calisthenics exercise, Speed and Agility, Slum