Children with good basic movement skills are likely to be healthier in later life

Physical literacy is like a loop - the momentum builds as your level of skill improves 

Picture: iStock 

Irish primary schoolchildren’s proficiency in fundamental movement skills – running, jumping, skipping, hopping – are pretty poor across the board, according to an author of a paper

published in the European Journal of Sports Science in December. 

And there were marked gender differences, with girls “away better than boys at skills like running, hopping and skipping, while boys were better at object-control skills, fore example, kicking, catching and throwing”, says Dr Stephen Behan of Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics, who also works at DCU School of Health and Human Performance.

The study – the first and largest of its kind to examine the specific relationship between fundamental movement skills and health-related fitness components across the full age range of primary school children – assessed 2,100 children as part of the Moving Well Being Well project.

“We saw improvement in proficiency in fundamental movement skills in every class until we got to age 10 and then it stopped. It stopped well short of mastery,” says Dr Behan, who attributes this to children participating less than recommended in physical activity. The Children’s Sport Participation and Physical Activity (CSPPA) 2018 study found only a small minority of children active enough to meet physical activity guidelines of 60 minutes daily moderate-to-vigorous activity.

Pointing to “loads of initiatives” (in non-Covid times) that aim to get kids active, Dr Behan says the Moving Well Being Well research took a different approach. “We looked at why children would choose to be active. Worldwide research says what’s really important is children’s physical literacy – what’s their actual ability to do fundamental movement skills like hopping, skipping, jumping, catching, throwing?

“If they’re good at a lot of these, they’ll have a wide base from which to participate in activities requiring these fundamental skills. They can fall back on these skills and combine them in sport-specific activities, anything from hurling to dancing.”

Dr Behan says physical literacy’s like a loop – it drives confidence to do the activity, practice improves the skill, which in turn builds motivation to further improve.

The DCU researchers also examined the relationship between fundamental movement skills and health-related fitness components - for example, flexibility, cardiovascular endurance, body composition, muscular strength and endurance. They found, when children exhibited high proficiency in fundamental movement skills, they scored similarly high in health-related fitness components.

They predict that children with higher mastery of these basic movement skills are more likely to be fitter as they progress out of childhood and that proficiency in the skills could contribute to overall healthier outcomes in later life, including reduced risk of heart disease and obesity.

More details

• Fundamental movement skills (FMS) are like ‘building blocks’ for more advanced movement that allow children to participate in physical activity.
• In the study children participated in a range of age-appropriate activities that examined their muscular strength and endurance/flexibility/cardiovascular endurance/body composition.
• The findings suggest improving children’s FMS could predict improvements in body composition by up to 25%, in muscular strength by up to 50%, and positively impact cardiovascular endurance by over 16%.
• Series of short videos to help children build up fundamental movement skills is available here.