Kiril Kostov’s research while affiliated with South-West University "Neofit Rilski" and other places

Физическото възпитание на учениците със специални образователни потребности има своите особености и това е съвсем логично и обяснимо. Известно е, че плътността на натоварването е индиректен (косвен) показател на физическото натоварване, понеже дава информация само за обема на натоварването, а не и за неговата интензивност. Все пак този показател е необходимото първо условие, за да се постигне оптимално физическо натоварване. Критерият за оптималност и достатъчност обаче е различен, когато става въпрос за деца с ментална ретардация. Това е следствие не само от различията в психифизическото развитие на тези деца, но е продиктувано и от по-различните цели и „по-скромните“ задачи на физическото възпитание и спорта при децата с интелектуална недостатъчност. Двигателната активност и свързаното с нея физическо натоварване са незаменим фактор за правилното психофизическо развитие на подрастващите. Тя е еднакво необходима както за децата в норма, така и за тези с психофизически аномалии.

The Physical education classes of students with special educational needs have itself peculiarities which is logical and explainable. It is well known that the load density is an indirect indicator for physical load because it gives information only for the capacity of the load and not for the intensity. Although this indicator is the necessary first condition for achieving optimal physical load. However, the criterion of optimality and sufficiency is different when it comes to children with mental retardation. This is due not only to differences in the psycho-physical development of these children, but is also dictated by the different aims and “more modest” tasks of physical education and sport in children with intellectual disabilities. The physical activity and the associated physical load are an indispensable factor for the proper psycho-physical development of adolescents. It is equally necessary for both normal children and those with psycho-physical anomalies.

In the whole system of impacts on students with mental retardation, viewing their more easy incorporation and professional orientation, basic place in the upbringing and educational process at the school for mentally retarded finds the physical activity. In the different forms of realization it is irreplaceable means for achieving greater effectiveness of education and upbringing of this kind of students. In the school physical education from the activities with physical element greatest application, find the game and gymnastics. The euphoria about the irreplaceable values of the game activity and the recommendations of some “capacities” that hardly the physical education of the students must be before all and mostly only a game, is on the way to lose its “actuality and originality”. With its characteristic peculiarities and specific impact, the gymnastic exercises solve a number of lawful-hygienic, educational and upbringing problems, as the necessity of solving corrective healing problems with great significance is outlined in students from schools for mentally retarded. Our preliminary investigations in this direction showed that this type of problems could be successfully solved only with the help of gymnastic activity and particularly with corrective gymnastic exercises. They are the most successful means for prophylactics and healing in many very characteristic and often met diseases with these students, of the locomotor system, for correction of the body stand, vertebral defects, disharmony between the different anthropometric indices, acquired flat foot, tight muscularity. Based on similar understanding, we conducted one-year experiment in the schools for mentally retarded in Blagoevgrad, in the village of Stob (Sofia region), in the village of Amahovo (Plovdiv region) and in Plovdiv. Our task was to check experimentally what are the possibilities for prophylactics or correction of already existing deformations of the vertebral column - basically scoliosis, with the help of specially selected gymnastic exercises with reformatory character.

The purpose of our study is to establish the adaptation abilities of the cardio-vascular system to physical loading of certain dosage with the following character and continuation: intensity 70-80% and continuation up to 1 minute; intensity 50-70% and continuation up to 3 minutes; intensity 30-50% and continuation up to 5 minutes. In the popular school practice, when it comes to the abilities of small pupils to exercise and endure running of relatively bigger distances - 200, 400, 600 and more meters, teachers always have “one in mind” because of their concerns about the reaction of the child organism to these trials. On one side, actually, the studies in the popular school practice which give a definite answer whether these worries are real or not are not too many. On the other side, physiologists are unconditional that every physical loading has its “heart cost” expressed in the number of heart contractions and this cost is rather firm and reproductive for the different individuals (Kr. Krastev, 1998). That is why in the popular school practice in physical education one of the basic methods for evaluation of the loading is pulse measuring. We used this method for evaluation of the adaptation abilities of 7-8 years old pupils to 200, 400, and 600 meters.