Relationships between physical activity, physical fitness and motor coordination in children and adolescents of low socioeconomic status

Abstract

The acquisition of motor skills during childhood can be considered an important strategy for adhesion to physical activity throughout life. Thus the following objectives are proposed: a) to quantify the physical activity practice, to measure heath-related physical fitness and performance indicators in fundamental motor skills and b) to examine the relationships between these variables in children and adolescents of both sexes residents in Ermelino Matarazzo (SP). Nine hundred youth aged between six and fourteen years will be invited to participate in the study. The measures include indicators of the amount of physical activity using an accelerometer (ActiGraph GT3X) and a physical activity questionnaire, indicators of physical fitness using the Eurofit test battery (Council of Europe, 1988) and performance in fundamental motor skills (TGMD-2, proposed by Ulrich, 2000) and anthropometric characteristics (BMI, kg.m -2). It will be developed descriptive tables of results, verified the relationships between variables by means of Pearson's correlation coefficient and to verify possible differences between and within groups a multivariate analysis of variance (Manova) of two factors will be calculated: gender (male and female) x age group (annual range). Significant main effects will be analyzed using a Newman-Keuls post-hoc test. (AU)