The rapid expansion of esports within higher education, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has raised important questions regarding their impact on students’ physical and psychological development. While traditional sports are well known for their benefits on motor and physical skills, esports primarily engage cognitive processes through sustained interaction with digital environments. This study compares motor skills and cognitive performance among higher education male students participating in esports and traditional sports in a post-pandemic context. The present study employs a quantitative, comparative, cross-sectional design to examine differences in motor skills (using standardized physical tests) and cognitive performance (focused attention, short-term memory, and information processing speed) between higher education male students engaged in esports and those participating in traditional sports. Male students engaged in traditional sports demonstrated superior motor outcomes, particularly in muscle strength and postural control. Cognitive performance was comparable between groups, with a slight advantage for traditional sports participants in focused attention and processing speed. Although esports may support certain aspects of cognitive performance to a degree comparable with traditional sports, they do not provide equivalent benefits in terms of motor and postural development. These results highlight the importance of maintaining physical activity within university settings and suggest that esports should complement rather than replace traditional sports in higher education programs.

Background: Emotion regulation (ER) difficulties are closely linked to maladaptive coping strategies, including impulsive and emotional eating, which undermine health and well-being in young adults. Technical university students are particularly vulnerable due to factors such as a high academic workload, sedentary behavior, and performance-related stress. This study evaluated the effects of a four-week structured physical activity intervention on ER and eating behaviors among engineering students. Methods: Seventy first- and second-year computer science and engineering students (40 males and 30 females, aged 19–25 years) from Politehnica University of Bucharest participated in the study. The intervention included three weekly supervised training sessions and a daily step count requirement (≥6000 steps), verified via weekly smartphone submissions. Pre- and post-intervention assessments employed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS-36) and the Adult Eating Behavior Questionnaire (AEBQ-35). Data were analyzed using Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests, Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, and paired-sample t-tests. Results: Significant improvements were observed in five ER domains—non-acceptance of emotional responses, goal-directed behavior, impulse control, access to regulation strategies, and emotional clarity (all p < 0.01). No change occurred in emotional awareness (p > 0.05). Eating behaviors (restrained, emotional, and external eating) showed no significant differences pre- and post-intervention (all p > 0.05). Conclusions: A short-term, structured physical activity program enhanced emotion regulation capacities but did not alter eating behaviors in the short run. These findings highlight the feasibility of embedding low-cost, exercise-based modules into higher education to strengthen students’ psychological resilience. Longer and multimodal interventions may be required to produce measurable changes in eating behaviors.

The restrictions due to COVID-19 have left their mark on the education of children with disabilities. Conducting physical therapy classes online was a necessity and at the same time a challenge for both teachers and parents. The purpose of this paper was to investigate spatio-temporal orientation, followed by the design and implementation of stimulation programs for education, by applying multisensory intervention programs conducted online. The study included 27 students with DS and associated conditions. The groups were established according to the kinetic diagnosis, motor and psychomotor disorders of each child. The statistical analysis was quantitative, with a significance level of 95%. The dependent test was used to highlight the significance of the rate of progress achieved by the children. Results obtained for the psychomotor component—spatial orientation registered an increase of 1.81 units, between the initial and the final test. The value of the Student-t test calculated t between the two tests is 6.20 so 6.20 > 2.056 (Table Fischer) and as a result the differences are significant (p < 0.05). Regarding the psychomotor component, for temporal orientation, the results registered an increase of 1.37 units between the initial and the final test. The value of the Student t test calculated between the two tests is 7.68 so 7.68 > 2.056 (Table Fischer), and as a result the differences are significant between the averages of the two tests (p < 0.05). Following the experiment, the results obtained by the subjects, at the final test, were superior to the initial ones, with differences between statistically significant arithmetic averages for all components of the investigated psychomotor ability: spatial orientation and temporal orientation.

Sustainable education involves educating young people about the importance of varied physical activities and developing long-term skills for an active lifestyle. We choose basketball as a method for sustainable education because it is a sport with diverse technical procedures and tactical actions anda game that plays a significant role in cognitive functional development. This study aims to modernize physical education and sports education to meet current trends and needs. A modern approach to lessons can contribute to the mental and motor development of young people, forming individuals who value movement for health and physical well-being. Thus, integrating VR into physical education lessons (using the means of basketball) represents a paradigm shift in how students prepare and improve their motor function. The study focuses on non-specialized higher education, combining the cognitive benefits of sports with sustainable practices, as we found his to be a gap in our literature review. The experimental program used Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a cognitive ability test, to measure general intelligence. The data were collected on two groups of children (control and experimental, at the beginning of the experiment and after 39 lessons of 100 min each). The t Test results applied in SPSS showed a significant increase in average scores for Raven’s Progressive Matrices after performing the motor program using basketball-specific means, especially for the experimental group. In conclusion, basketball can be a valuable tool for improving cognitive abilities, along with academic and social stimulation, being the key to complete intellectual development.

In elite wrestling, achieving the best results in major competitions is the primary goal of all activities, and the secondary goal is to provide a recreational, compensatory, or therapeutic approach. In this regard, one of the current concerns in establishing the competition system focuses on children’s competitions. For this reason, specialists in this field are turning their attention to getting as many children as possible involved in sports competitions. They will later represent the base of the secondary selection that will deliver juniors aspiring to important titles. This paper aims to improve the takedown technique's performance in the training process through effective means developed after video analysis of the elemental mechanisms that constitute the action studied. The research was carried out between 19 February and 9 September 2022 within the Greco-Roman Wrestling Section of the School Sports Club no. 5 in Bucharest. The participants were advanced junior athletes aged between 15 and 17 years, competing in the Individual National Greco-Roman Championships. For the study scope, they were divided into two groups (a control group of 9 athletes and an experimental group of 9 athletes). Although both groups obtained similar results in the initial test, the experimental group achieved clearly better results in the final test compared to the control group, which demonstrates the difference between the types of training performed by the two groups.

Motor education through basketball contributes to the development of manual coordination, balance and laterality, organization in space and time, the latter focusing on the body scheme that children are primarily concerned with at primary school. Practicing, by using the simple means of basketball, improves the primordial sensory skills; sophisticated and global motor activities improve the basic motor skills and facilitate the perceptual-motor integration, which is the starting point for the cognitive functions. This paper aims at designing and implementing a kinetic program of stimulation using simple means of basketball in order to improve the balance and laterality of children with intellectual disabilities. The results obtained revealed the efficientization of the fundamental motor skills (locomotion, handling and stability) of the research subjects.