Milne N.1, Leong G.2, Hing W.1
1Bond University, Physiotherapy Department, Robina, Australia, 2Lady Cilento Children's Hospital, Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes, Brisbane, Australia
Background: The physical fitness of children and adolescents internationally has been declining over the past 30 years. In order for children to be physically fit, they need to be physically active. To be physically active children require the combined attributes of both health-related fitness (e.g. cardiorespiratory endurance, heart rate and blood pressure responses to exercise and body composition) and performance-related fitness (e.g. motor proficiency).
Purpose: The overall purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between motor proficiency and health-related fitness in children. In addition the study aimed to determine if particular combinations of motor skills have a stronger relationship with individual health-related fitness measures.
Methods: Seventy-seven children (F:28, M:49) (Mean Age: 11.19±2.74 yr) participated in this prospective cohort study. Physical measures included: Motor proficiency (Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, 2nd Edition), Body Mass Index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), VO2peak (mL/kg/min).
Results: After factoring in age; motor proficiency as a combined total score, had a strong negative relationship with the health-related fitness measures of BMI (r2= 0.62, p 0.001) and waist circumference (r2= 0.72, p 0.001) and a strong positive relationship with VO2peak (r2= 0.78, p=0.002). Children with lower motor proficiency (≤25th percentile) had a significantly larger mean waist circumference (M=13.85cm, 95% CI [2.05, 25.66], p=0.01), heavier weight (M = 22.17kg, 95% CI [2.44, 41.91], p=0.02) and higher BMI (M = 5.10 kg/m2, 95% CI [0.33, 9.87], p=0.03) than children with higher motor proficiency (≤ 75th percentile). Strength and Running Speed and Agility were the strongest contributors to the relationship between motor proficiency and the health-related measures of WC, BMI and cardiorespiratory fitness (VO2 peak).
Conclusion(s): Motor proficiency, after controlling for age and gender is negatively associated with health-related measures including resting systolic and diastolic BP, weight, BMI and WC and has a positive relationship with cardiorespiratory fitness (VO2peak).
Implications: Motor proficiency and in particular gross motor proficiency, should be considered a focus for investigation for children with poor health-related fitness (e.g. high BMI and WC percentiles or low cardiorespiratory fitness), as motor incompetence could be an underlying contributing factor to a childs poor physical health.
Funding acknowledgements: Bond University, Faculty of Health Science and Medicine seeding grant funding was obtained for this study.
Topic: Paediatrics
Ethics approval: Ethical approval was granted by Bond University Human Research Ethics committee for this study protocol.
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
