A 4-week physical activity and healthy lifestyle habits-based program effects on physical literacy, health-related quality of life, symptomatology and attention in children and adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Experimental group: an after-school intervention program based on the development of the domains that make up physical literacy will be implemented. Considering the duration of previous physical activity interventions in this population, a 4-week intervention period was established, with two 55-min sessions per week. All the sessions will be driven by physical education teachers and/or physical-sports educators. The sessions will be divided into several parts, starting with a 5 min greeting and exchange of daily experiences, a 20-min block I of the session, a 20-min block II of the session and a 10-min cool-down for relaxation and feedback. Specifically, to develop the domains that make up physical literacy, the main part of the intervention will consist of two blocks of 20 min. Both blocks I and II will favour the development of physical competence through different physical activities. More specifically, block I will focus on the acquisition of content that will contribute to the development of the domains of knowledge and understanding and daily activity. And block II, in addition to favouring physical competence, will seek to improve motivation. Block I: activities will be carried out to develop knowledge and understanding of concepts and attitudes related to healthy lifestyle habits and physical activity, through the activity "Card relay race". For this activity, participants will be divided into teams, which will be placed in rows. Each participant in each team carries a card (model) in his/her hand and will have to run individually to a table located about 30 metres away and, once there, he/she will find a series of cards similar to his/her own (stimuli), and will have to place the card in his/her hand on top of one of the cards on the table that corresponds to his/her own (i.e. look for the stimulus that corresponds to his/her model). Subsequently, he/she will do the race back so that the next partner can come out. The contents of the cards will be related to healthy lifestyle habits and in each session there will be an ini-tial brief explanation of the content to be developed that day. This activity, adapted from a previous study, is intended to improve attentional functioning as well as to acquire knowledge about healthy lifestyle habits, while at the same time practising physical activity. Thus contributing to two fundamental pillars of PL such as knowledge and understanding, daily activity and physical competence. Block 2: The second block will be based on active play, as it is fundamental in the transmission of values and attitudinal content, as well as in the stimulation of social and civic relationships with others. Similar to previous studies on ADHD children, different ball games, multi-jumping, throwing games will be carried out. The games that will be played each week and their description is provided in PlaySport from the Ontario Physical Education and Health Association (http://www.playsport.net/ (accessed 25 January 2023). Games will have a cooperative and competitive component due to the motivational benefits they can bring. Activities will be adapted to the initial level of the children. The adherence or fidelity to the intervention will be monitored registering the attendance of participants at the sessions held.