Relationship between Motor Performance and Body Composition in Brazilian School Children - Abstract
Introduction: Modern society is faced with limitations to practice physical activity, due to the lack of infrastructure, lack of time, lack of public safety and growth of sedentary activities that favor a sedentary lifestyle.
Objective: Examined the relationship between motor performance and body composition of school children.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out with schoolchildren between 9 and 10 years of age from a public school in the city of Palmas, Tocantins, Brazil. We measured the Metabolic Equivalent, body composition and motor performance. For the analysis of association between variables, the Mann-Whitney test and Spearman correlation test were used.
Results: The sample comprised 123 children with 65% being females, 57.72% was classified as appropriate regarding fat percentage and 62.61% as eutrophic for BMI. In relation to motor performance, 60.98% was below ideal. When the association between motor performance and gender was evaluated, it was observed that boys presented better indices than girls. Regarding the relationship between body composition and motor performance, it can be observed that the higher the body composition the lower the motor performance, mainly between cardiorespiratory endurance.
Conclusion: The study showed a negative relationship between body composition and motor performance of schoolchildren in both sexes, thus, students with higher body weight and body fat have lower performance.