Academics warn of adult health burden if children’s lack of exercise not addressed

The UK is storing up long-term health problems if it doesn’t address an “urgent” lack of physical activity skills among children and teenagers, a group of academics has warned.

Professor Mike Duncan from Coventry University’s Centre for Sports, Exercise and Life Sciences has argued that low levels of skills such as balancing, twisting, running, jumping grasping, handling, throwing, and catching in children and adolescents could, if not addressed, lead to increases in health issues in later life such as obesity, diabetes, and poor mental wellbeing.

Professor Duncan is among a group of 12 academics who have published an expert statement highlighting data from a study in 2019 showing that less than 20% of children in the UK aged six to nine years had mastered the four key motor skills – run, jump, throw, catch – identified by the PE national curriculum.

The fact this data was collected pre-pandemic and, since then, successive lockdowns and periods of home-schooling have led to many children becoming sedentary, means the problem is only likely to have worsened.

For example, one study from Canada found 4.8% of children aged five to 11 and just 0.6% of those aged 12-17 had met the country’s daily exercise guidelines of doing an hour or more of moderate to vigorous physical activity during the pandemic.

“The potential long-term impacts of low fundamental movement skills include higher rates of inactivity and poorer health and wellbeing,” Professor Duncan said.

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“We believe skill levels are so low that children do not currently have sufficient foundation to successfully participate in different forms of physical activity and without this we are likely to see increasing ill health related to obesity, diabetes, and mental wellbeing.

“There is an urgent need to ensure that children are taught the movement skills that will enable them to be active for life,” he added.