Preliminary research on phisycal abilities in children from 8-10 years in Garbagnate Milanese

This research in 2007 – 2008 considered 331 children attended the 3th, 4th and the 5th class of Primary School in Garbagnate Milanese (MI) and has been completed with the cooperation of Catholic University of Milan – Motor Science and Sport – graduated students. The main goal is to know which are the factors that influence overweight and obesity as: the lack of any kind of physical activities, the presence of “paramorfismi”, a poor diet or a wrong feeding. This work used a questionnaire on the children’s habits and style of life, a series of antrophometric and physical test. A medical visit, has been done in each school, in order to measure height, weight, skinfolds, waist circumference, examine morphological – postural. The trend of height (graphic 1) and weight (graphic 2) between these children is nearly equal between males (137,54 cm ± 6,59; 35,61 kg ± 8,67) and females (136,49 cm ± 7,06; 35,76 kg ± 7,51). The body mass index has quite a similar trend between males (18,66 kg/m2 ± 1) and females (19,11kg/m2 ± 1). The medical visit has underlined that the majority of children does not show accentuations or meaningful reductions of the physiological curves dorsal and lumbar. There is a slight prevalence of dorsal cifosis level in males and the lumbar lordosis kevel is greater in females. In overweight children, the presence of knees valgus and varus and of flat feet (around 55%) is frequent specially in males. In the 40 meters fast run (“schuttle run”) (graphic 3) males (9,65 s ± 1,02) are faster compared to the females (10,28 s ± 1,04) but not in a significant way. In the long standing test and forward throw Minibasket ball, the trend is analogous between males (151,50 cm ± 24,75; 4,17 cm ± 0,74) and females (129,65 cm ± 24,59; 3,84 cm ± 0,72). In stick test, males (63,8 cm ± 11,74) obtain better results than females (58,13 cm ± 12,39); in the sit & reach test (graphic 4) females (2,83 cm ± 6,84) obtain better results than males (- 1,66 cm ± 6,96). The information from the questionnaire outlined that males (23%) spent more than one hour and a half playing, instead females (19%) one hour, some children (4%) told they never play. About the sport activity practice, males prefer playing soccer, basketball and swimming instead females prefer gymnastic, swimming and volleyball; the 3% of children told they do not play any sport activities. The few sport activity is associated to a bad way of eating. Only few children (4%) prefer eat meat, cheese and vegetables. Considering mathematics, writing and reading test, compared to the motor test, the result outlined children with a better motor performances, are more rapid in the answers, in understanding and solving problem; females are better compared to males.