Primary School Children: Contribution of Nutritional Status in Explanation of Their Explosive and Repetitive Strength

Abstract

Recent studies have attested the fact that now days children are living a sedentary life, which causes an excessive increase in body weight, thus negatively affecting their health and motor skills. Furthermore, studies up to this point have proven that there are differences in the motor skills of pupils with different nutritional status.
The aim of this research was to determine impact of nutritional status on motor skills of primary school children also to determine whether there are differences in motor abilities with respect to gender. The research was conducted on a sample of 239 pupils (128 girls and 111 boys) of the fourth grade. The variable sample consisted of 2 anthropometric variables (body weight and body height) and 6 variables for estimating explosive and repetitive strength. The obtained results of this research have shown that for boys there are negative correlation between their BMI and tests: long jump, high jump, squats and sit-ups. For the sample of girls, the BMI positively correlates with test throwing a medicine ball and negatively with test sit-ups. Furthermore, boys achieve better results in motor tests than girls.