RQES Table of Contents
Motor Competence, Physical Fitness, Psychosocial, and Physical Activity Characteristics in 9- to 14-Year-Olds: Sex Differences and Age and Maturity Considerations
Alan M. Burton, Ian Cowburn, Joey C. Eisenmann, Thomas Sawczuk, Thomas Watson, Jack McDermott & Kevin Till
The development of motor competence (i.e., an individual’s ability to perform a variety of motor skills, where outcomes are influenced by movement quality, control, and coordination), physical fitness, and psychosocial (i.e., the interrelation between individual psychological traits that have social influences and how these factors guide behaviors, Gledhill et al., 2017) characteristics throughout childhood and adolescence are important for health and performance (Lloyd et al., 2016). Recent evidence suggests these characteristics are declining among youth (Sandercock & Cohen, 2019) (i.e., pre-pubertal children and circa/post-pubertal adolescents, Lloyd et al., 2015; Towlson et al., 2020), which is confounded by fewer youth meeting worldwide physical activity recommendations (Aubert et al. 2018), reduced sports participation trends (Visek et al., 2015), alongside increasing obesity rates (Health and Social Care Information Centre, 2017) and mental health conditions (Murphy et al., 2020).
Whilst these concerns exist, compared to child populations, limited research is available that collectively presents the motor competence, physical fitness, psychosocial and physical activity characteristics (from this point forward referred to as multidimensional health related characteristics) within adolescents. As highlighted by Burton et al. (2023) the aim of studies that have examined multidimensional health-related characteristics among adolescents (e.g., Britton et al., 2019), has been to examine the efficacy of the developmental model proposed by Stodden et al. (2008). This model suggests that motor competence, physical fitness, perceived competence, and physical activity interact to induce positive (healthy weight status, positive spiral of engagement) or negative (unhealthy weight status, negative spiral of disengagement) trajectories.
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