Exploring Recommendations for Child and Adolescent Fundamental Movement Skills Development: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Fundamental movement skills (FMS) are frequently referred to as the “building blocks” of movement for children and adolescents in their lifelong physical activity journey. It is critical, however, that FMS are developed within Physical Education learning environments and other sport-related settings, specifically as these building blocks of movement require appropriate teaching and practice opportunities. While FMS are well-established as an “important focus” for children and adolescents, to the authors’ knowledge, there appears to be no standardized FMS development guidelines existent within the literature. This paper will examine whether the frequency, intensity, time, and type (FITT) principle could be transferable to interventions focusing on FMS development, and if so, whether sufficient consistency of findings exists to guide practitioners in their session design. Applying the FITT principle in this way may help to facilitate the comparison of FMS-related intervention studies, which may contribute to the future development of practical FMS-related guidelines for children and adolescents.

The Bidirectional Correlation between Fundamental Motor Skill and Moderate-to-Vigorous Physical Activities: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Because childhood is an important stage for developing healthy behaviors, including physical activity [ 56 ], developing motor skills will lay a good physical activity habit for future life [ 4 ]. Currently, children’s motor abilities are very weak [ 57 , 57 ], and it is necessary and necessary to first create an environment conducive to their motor abilities [ 53 , 56 , 58 ].…”

“…In childhood, physical activity can promote obesity, skeletal development and cognitive development, and psychosocial and cardiovascular development [ 3 ]. Lifetime physical activity habits (sporty and sedentary) often occur in childhood and continue over time [ 4 ], but weaken with age [ 5 ]. Physical labor has become an increasingly severe public health issue, causing weight gain in childhood [ 6 , 7 , 8 ], and bringing heavy economic pressure to society [ 9 ].…”

Impact and Implementation of an Early Years Fundamental Motor Skills Intervention for Children 4–5 Years

“…In facilitating the necessary continued engagement of children in the intervention, staff employed a variety of strategies such as analogues, story narrative, game-based approaches, and use of cues and feedback which offers the opportunity of creating variety and to help make the intervention content both interesting and consumable to children. Moreover, sessions focused on different areas of FMS to help build variety which could help facilitate engagement [65,66]. In the delivery of physical activity programmes, staffing has been identified as an important consideration by the Department of Health [67].…”

Investigating the socio-ecological model factors influencing physical activity and health promotion among early adolescents in the southern parts of Ethiopia

“…As a result, to address the needs of students with different abilities and interests in physical activity, the school community, especially, to encourage students to engage in school health activities, physical education teachers play a crucial role (23,31). In addition, Enhancing the enjoyment and attractiveness of sporting activities is an effective approach for raising teenage engagement in school-based physical activity (4,54).…”