Motor development, physical fitness and health in children

Maintaining a sufficient level of physical activity and fitness is a prerequisite for good health and well-being in adults as well as children. Motor competence has been seen as a possible determinant of physical activity and physical fitness among children. The papers aim to contribute to an understanding of how motor competence in children relates to physical fitness and different aspects of health and development in children. The four studies included in this thesis employed different study designs. Paper I is a correlation study, where the relationship between motor competence and physical fitness was explored in sixty-seven school children who were between 9–10 years of age. Paper II is a comparaisons study between two groups of children, 12 children designated as the group with movement difficulties, and 12 children constituting the comparison group. Paper III, a longitudinal follow-up of the study in Paper II, examines how physical fitness develops over time in 18 children who were identified as having high or low motor competence from the initial sample of 67 children. Paper IV is a review article which aims to examine the implications of motor competence in different aspects of lives of children and adolescents. The findings, presented in the four papers (I – IV), suggest that motor competence may have significant implications for physical fitness and various aspects of health and development in children. The results show a significant correlation (-0.586) between motor competence and physical fitness for the whole sample of the 67 children who participated in the study (Paper I). Significant differences were also found between children with movement difficulties and the comparison group for all nine tasks and the total score for the Test of Physical Fitness (TPF) (Paper II). A longitudinal follow-up, over a period of 32 months, reveals that the group of children with a low level of motor competence performed less well on all physical fitness measures compared to the group of children with a high level of motor competence. Both groups scored significantly higher on the physical fitness test after this period and the relative differences in physical fitness outcomes between the groups were relatively constant over time (Paper III). Furthermore, the findings show that the level of a child’s motor competence has significant implications for their participation in physical activity, performance on different fitness components and risk of being overweight and obese in childhood and early adolescence. Moreover, children and adolescents with low motor competence are at risk of incurring a variety of psychosocial difficulties, such as lower self-esteem and anxiety. Impact on perceived athletic and scholastic competence and long-term effects on academic outcome are also reported (Paper IV). It can be concluded from the studies that motor competence may have significant long-term implications for various aspects of development, including physical fitness. Given that various physical fitness components are linked to different health outcomes, these consequences are a matter of concern for both current health status and later health status in children with low motor competence.