Abstract
The purpose of this study was to clarify the trends since 2000 in body shape, physical strength, and motor ability in early childhood in Japan. The study subjects were kindergarten and nursery school girls (age 3–5 years old) in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. Physique (height and weight), quantitative motor ability (20 m dash, standing long jump, tennis ball throw, side step, one-leg hop, hanging from a horizontal bar, and general motor ability (jump over and under) were compared in the 1999 and 2009 school years. The results revealed that, compared with ten years earlier, height was approximately 0.9 cm shorter in 4-year-old girls and weight was approximately 0.3 kg lighter in 3- and 4-year-old girls in 2009. In physical strength and motor ability, the time for jump over and under was shorter in 3-year-olds, the number of times a rope was jumped was higher and the time hanging from a horizontal bar was longer, and the time for jump over and under was shorter in 4-year-olds. In 5-year-olds, only an increase in the number of times a rope was jumped increased. The tennis ball throw and side steps were not significantly different from 10 years earlier in any of the ages. Physique, physical strength, and motor ability improved with growth, but compared with 10 years earlier many of the items were found to decrease or remain the same in all ages.
Highlights
More than 20 years have passed since Windows 95 was launched in Japan, and the computer age has truly arrived
This study investigated the trends in physical ability of young children in recent years by comparing the physical fitness and motor ability results in the two years of 1999 and 2009, to examine the question of whether or not the physical abilities of young children have deteriorated in the years since 2000
This study investigated the trends in physical ability of young girls over the 10-year span from 1999 to 2009 in an attempt to understand recent trends in physique and motor ability of young girls
Summary
More than 20 years have passed since Windows 95 was launched in Japan, and the computer age has truly arrived. The computer age is depriving people of physical activity and new diseases are emerging from disruption in the balance of living activities. Japan’s high economic growth has resulted in acceptance of a society that overemphasizes intellectual development, resulting in the loss of outdoor play for children and a lack of free time to develop physically. Low were physical functions and abilities that do not appear in the results of physical strength measurements, for example activities and motor performance that occur in actual daily life, so that it is becoming more common for children to abandon tasks before completion or suffer accidents and injuries. According to Ueda [2], the inner potential for growth is the change in the meaning of life caused by the energy of internal time variations that come from inside humans
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