Benefits of recreational physical activity in 6-9 year old children: impact on body composition and motor skills

Abstract

Optimally developed body composition and motor skills make an important contribution to increasing quality of life and also determine sports performance. The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of recreational contemporary dance training on body composition and the level of motor skills development in 6-9 year old children. The subjects of the study were 26 girls aged 6-9 years, 12 of whom were in the experimental group (EG) and 14 in the control group (CG). The EG participated in contemporary dance training for 6 months, twice a week, one hour each, and the CG did not perform any extracurricular physical activity. Body mass index (BMI), body fat (BF) and skeletal muscle (SM) were analyzed with OMRON BF511 monitor. The motor skills assessment tests were: standing board jump (SBJ), Matorin test (MatT), back saver sit & reach with alternatively reached legs (S&R_RL – right leg reached, S&R_LL – left leg reached) and sit-ups (S-U). Data were processed with SPSS 20 software. Statistically significant differences between initial and final values were found for body composition in the experimental group for the parameter SM (p = .000), and in the control group for SM (p = .004), but also for BF (p = .053) on CG. In the motor skills assessment tests, in the experimental group the differences were statistically significant for all parameters assessed (p ≤ .05), and in the control group only for S&R_RL (p = .007) and , S&R_LL (p = .005), but with smaller effects size. In conclusion, contemporary dance practiced for 6 months, twice a week, has no impact on body composition, but may influence the development of specific motor skills.