Int J School Health. 2017 January; 4(1):e36010. doi: 10.17795/intjsh-36010.

Published online 2016 August 14. Research Article

Core Stabilization Training and Fundamental Motor Skills in Children

Robabeh Rostami,1,* and Meysam Ghaedi1
1
Shiraz University, Shiraz, IR Iran
*
Corresponding author: Robabeh Rostami, Shiraz University, Shiraz, IR Iran. Tel: +98-71136134625; Fax: +98-7116486441, E-mail: [email protected]

Received 2016 March 13; Revised 2016 June 24; Accepted 2016 June 28.

Abstract

Background: The right establishment of specialized and sports movements results from proper motor development in childhood.
Objectives: The current study aimed to evaluate the effect of a period of core stabilization training on the fundamental motor skills
in children aged four to six.
Methods: From the kindergartens of Shiraz, Iran, 31 children aged four to six were selected using purposive sampling method,
and randomly divided into two groups: 16 children in the control and 15 children in the core stabilization training groups. After
implementation of the test of gross motor development-2 (TGMD-2) as pre-test, the experimental group performed core stabilization
training for six weeks (four sessions per week) and overall for 24 sessions of 45 minutes; in the same period, the control group did
the normal activities of kindergartens. When the experimental group had finished its training, both groups were evaluated again
in the post-test stage by TGMD-2. It is a process-oriented test that measures the development of the fundamental motor skills of 3 -
10-year-old children in locomotor skills and object control categories and its results can be interpreted by both norm- and criterion-
referenced methods. To describe the biographical characteristics of the participants, and the resultant data of the test, mean and
standard deviation statistics were used and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was employed to evaluate the normal distribution of data.
At the level of statistical inference, univariate analysis of covariance was used. Data analysis was performed using SPSS statistical
software, version 21. The significance level was P ≤ 0.5.
Results: Regarding pre-test scores as covariate variable, the intervention of core stabilization training in locomotor skills and object
control skills indicated a significant difference between the experimental and control groups (P = 0.006 and P = 0.011, respectively).
Conclusions: It was concluded that the core stabilization training can be used as a valuable intervention leading to the develop-
ment of fundamental motor skills. Furthermore, such training has more effects on object control skills than locomotor skills.

Keywords: Core Stabilization, Fundamental Motor Skills, Children

1. Background riods. Without considering this stage of skill development,

individuals have problems in doing sport and daily ac-
Changes in lifestyles and the invention of equipment, tivities (3). Developing these skills allows children to in-
tools, and machines, and in short, paying less attention to dependently communicate with their environment (4, 5).
movement and sports in today’s mechanical life has dou- Evidence suggests that fundamental skill development in
bled the expectations and commitments of physical educa- childhood may play an important role in the prevention
tion objectives. Therefore, physical education experts be- of physical activity in adulthood (6). An important point
lieve that by identifying and setting physical education ob- about the maturation of fundamental movements is that
jectives, a great favor is done to humanity since modern these skills are not merely age dependent, but they should
man needs movement and activity, especially at early ages. be practiced. That is why providing educational opportu-
Inactivity and lack of movement stunt growth, and cause nities and incentives are stressed to develop these skills
depression, abnormalities and loss of vitality and joy of during childhood.
life (1). Childhood, by including important periods of mo- Poor fundamental motor skills of individuals and lack
tor development, plays an important role in maintaining of public attention to this important issue has seriously
an active lifestyle. Fundamental motor skills, one of the concerned physical activity and sport experts since funda-
important periods of children’s motor development, are mental motor skills such as running, jumping, throwing
a basic prerequisite for more complex sport movements and hitting are the skills used in everyone’s daily life, and
and daily activities. These activities fall into three main they are basic requirements for man’s survival. Complex
groups: stability skills, locomotion skills and object con- skills of adulthood that lead to success in sports and pro-
trol skills (2). Fundamental skills are mastered during the fessions are in fact the complex form of the fundamental
growth period, especially early childhood; therefore, spe- motor skills that should be developed in childhood. In fact,
cial attention should be paid to pre-school and school pe- the process of learning and motor development is a series

Copyright © 2016, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the
original work is properly cited.
 Rostami R and Ghaedi M

of successive chains linked together and continually fol- 2 (TGMD-2). Then, they were randomly divided into con-
low each other to reach complex skills. The first chains are trol and experimental groups. The experimental group
related to learning fundamental motor skills. performed core stabilization training for 24 sessions of 45
The term Core exercises is unfamiliar in the world of fit- minutes, and in the same period, the control group did
ness and rehabilitation which is not properly understood the normal activities of the nursery school. It is notewor-
yet (7). Core stability is a vital and essential component of thy that the studies mentioned in the literature of the cur-
performance. The purpose of the core is to create the nec- rent study evaluated the effect of intervention program on
essary strength to access the existing motor task. Core sta- fundamental motor skills; the number of training sessions
bility and the performance of motor chain are necessary was 18 to 36. As the US national research council in plan-
for the stability and functionality of all movements (8). The ning the intervention declares, in optimal conditions, in-
focus of studies such as those of Clark et al. (9), Piegaro Jr tervention should be provided five days per week, but with
(10), Leetun et al. (11), Samson (12), Petrofsky et al. (13), Kahle regard to the nursey school schedule, this research was
(14) and Sarvestani et al. (15) were on the role that core sta- conducted for six weeks, four days per a week. After the
bility exercises play to improve factors such as accomplish- training, both control and experimental groups were eval-
ment, sports performance, injury prevention and balance uated again in the post-test stage using TGMD-2.
in adults’ communities. Core stability studies in Iran are
limited to the studies by Bahmani et al. (16) and Habibian 3.2. Intervention
Dehkordi et al. (17) that did not consider the present re- Experimental group conducted core stabilization
search population. training for six weeks, four times a week. Each session
lasted for about 45 minutes. Core stabilization training
protocol was based on the trainings proposed by Jeffreys
2. Objectives (19) and consisted of three levels of training, beginning
with level one and gradually developing to level three.
Thus, according to the importance of learning funda- Level one included static contractions in a stable condi-
mental movements in people lives and its central role as tion. Level two included dynamic movements in a stable
one of the strongest predictors of future physical activities environment and level three trainings included dynamic
(18), also because of the importance of the core as a missing movements in an unstable environment and gradually
link in training programs (7) and due to the importance of resistance movements were used in this environment.
pre-school age as a very important period in the develop- Swiss balls were used to create an unstable environment.
ment of motor behavior, the current study aimed to evalu-
ate the effect of a period of core stability training on funda- 3.3. Tools and Methods of Data Collection
mental motor skills in children aged four to six. 3.3.1. Personal Information Form
Subjects’ demographic data including date of birth,
3. Methods weight and height were registered in the confidential
forms with the assistance of the nursery school officials
Due to the nature and aims of the study, the experi- and the children’s parents.
mental design was employed with pre-test post-test and
3.3.2. Test of Gross Motor Development 2
the control group.
Test of gross motor development 2 (TGMD-2) was the
data gathering tool for motor skill competency variable.
3.1. Population, Sample and Selected Methods
TGMD-2 is a process-oriented test that measures the de-
The statistical population of the study included all four velopment of the fundamental motor skills of 3 - 10-year-
to six-year-old children in the nursery schools and pre- old children in locomotor skills and object control cate-
schools of Shiraz, Iran, in the 2014 - 2015 academic year gories, and its results can be interpreted in both norm-
selected by purposive sampling method. Since this study and criterion-referenced methods (20). This test, based on
was an impact assessment survey, 31 children aged four to motor development measurement resources, is one of the
six were selected and randomly divided into the control most common tests of measurement in the field of phys-
and experimental groups (16 children in the control group ical education. The validity and reliability of this test is
and 15 children in the core stabilization training group). approved in Iran by Zarezadeh (2009). Based on her stud-
The study process consisted of pre-test, core stabilization ies, internal consistency reliability coefficients for locomo-
training and post-test. First, the children were evaluated in tor skills and object control scores and also for compos-
the pre-test stage using test of gross motor development ite score were 0.87, 0.74 and 0.80, respectively. The range

2 Int J School Health. 2017; 4(1):e36010.

 Rostami R and Ghaedi M

of test-retest reliability coefficient was from 0.65 to 0.81 with an average of 29.00 and the control group with an av-
and the grading internal validity was more than 0.95. Con- erage of 22.50, in terms of performing object control mo-
struct validity was proved by factor analysis. tor skills (F = 132.729 and P = 0.011) was significant. Accord-
ingly, it can be stated that core stabilization training im-
3.4. Statistical Method proved the object control skills of four to six-year-old chil-
To describe the demographic data of the participants dren in the post-test stage. According to ETA separation fac-
and the resultant data of the test; the mean and standard tor, influence rate was 0.83 which means that 83% of the
deviation were used and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was em- post-test variance was due to the intervention of core sta-
ployed to evaluate the normal distribution of data. At the bilization training. In other words, 83% of the difference
level of statistical inference, univariate analysis of covari- between the control and experimental groups in the post-
ance was used. Data analysis was performed using SPSS sta- test was due to applying independent variable.
tistical software, version 21. The significance level was α ≤
0.05.
5. Discussion

4. Results Due to the reduction of physical activity and as a result

the decline in the performance of special and fundamen-
To quantitatively describe the demographic variables tal motor skills, it seems necessary to perform motor inter-
of the participants, the mean and standard deviation of ventions from childhood. Children’s participation in var-
height, weight and body mass index (BMI) relating to the ious dynamic programs leads to the development of vari-
subjects in the control and experimental groups were mea- ous movement schemata.
sured. The results are presented in Table 1. It also increases the capability of performing motor
As indicated in the above and the the means of move- skills during life. Therefore, with regard to the issues raised
ment and object control skills related to the control and ex- above, the current study aimed to evaluate the effect of
perimental groups were almost equal in the pre-test stage, core stabilization training on the fundamental skills of
but after conducting intervention, the mean of experimen- four to six-year-old children. Based on the obtained results,
tal group increased both in terms of locomotor skills and core stabilization training improved object control and lo-
object control skills are presented in Table 2 and Figure 1. comotor skills of the children. The results of the study
As shown in the following table, after controlling in- were in line with the findings of Bahmani (16), Habibian
tervention variable, statistical test of covariance analysis Dehkordi (17), Shinkle et al. (21) Saeterbakken et al. (22) and
with a significance level of (P ≤ 0.05) was used (the pre- Seiler et al. (23) which all had reported the improvement of
test scores of locomotor and object control skills were con- motor function after the core stabilization training. Bah-
sidered as covariance variable). The results of covariance mani (16) examined the effects of a period of core stabi-
analysis for control and experimental groups in the object lization training on the performance of locomotor and ob-
control and locomotor motor are presented in Table 3. ject control skills of 7 - 10-year-old male students with de-
Based on the results drawn from Table 3, by consider- lay in fundamental motor skills development. His study
ing pre-test scores as covariate variable (query), the inter- results showed a significant improvement in performing
vention of core stabilization training in object control and fundamental skills in both subscales of locomotor and ob-
locomotor skills led to a significant difference between the ject control using TGMD-2.
control and experimental groups (P ≤ 0.05). As indicated, On the other hand, the results of the current study
the difference between the experimental group, with an were inconsistent with those of Schilling et al. (24). One
average of 31.46 and the control group with an average of reason for this inconsistency may be the limited number
27.87, in terms of performing locomotor skills (F = 44.825 of subjects used in their research. Probably, small sample
and P = 0.006) was significant. Accordingly, it can be stated size (five subjects in each group) failed to fully show the
that core stabilization training improved the locomotor effect of core stabilization training on performance. Al-
skills of four to six-year-old children in post-test stage. Ac- though their subjects were untrained students, the impor-
cording to ETA separation factor, influence rate was 0.62 tant factor in the lack of significant improvement in per-
which means that 62% of post-test variance was due to formance scores, according to the researchers own beliefs,
the intervention of core stabilization training. In other was small sample size and high-variability of the subjects.
words, 62% of the difference between the control and ex- Another reason is using different criteria to measure the
perimental groups in the post-test was due to applying in- performance.
dependent variable. Furthermore, concerning object con- In terms of motor development, in the current study,
trol skills, the difference between the experimental group, the existing difference in the scores of gross motor test

Int J School Health. 2017; 4(1):e36010. 3

 Rostami R and Ghaedi M

Table 1. Mean and Standard Deviation of Height, Weight and Body Mass Index in the Study Groupsa

Groupsb , c Number Height, cm Weight, kg Body Mass Index

Group1 16 115.45 ± 4.79 20.01 ± 3.08 14.95 ± 1.61

Group2 15 116.63 ± 4.13 21.44 ± 3.74 15.71 ± 2.38

a
Values are expressed as mean ± SD.
b
Group 1, the intervention group; group 2, the control group.
c
The mean and standard deviation of the subjects in both control and experimental groups in pre-test and posttest are presented.

40 Pre-test mean
Post-test mean
35

30

25

20

15

10

0
Control group Experimental Total Object control Object control of Total object
locomotor group movement of control experimental control
locomotor group group

Pre-test mean 25.81 24.13 25 20.62 20.73 20.67

Post-test mean 27.87 31.46 29.61 22.5 29 25.64

Figure 1. Scores of Pre-Test and Post-Test in the Control and Experimental Groups

Table 2. Mean and Standard Deviation of the Study groups by Pre-Test and Post-Testa strength and a more efficient power transfer by the core
to upper and lower extremities as a result of core stabiliza-
Statistical Index of Skill Pre-Test Post-Test tion training can be an important factor in improving per-
formance and performing the fundamental motor skills of
Control group locomotor 25.81 ± 5.40 27.87 ± 5.28
those children that, in the current study, were under the in-
Experimental group locomotor 24.13 ± 3.02 31.46 ± 2.46
tervention of core stabilization training.
25.00 ± 4.42 29.61 ± 4.47
Total locomotor
In total, core stabilization training enhances the fun-
Object control of the control group 20.62 ± 3.86 22.50 ± 3.98 damental skills performance of the children with little ex-
Object control of the experimental 20.73 ± 2.84 29.00 ± 2.50 pertise in these skills. Strength, stamina and a high coor-
group dination in the core may be considered as central factors
Total object control 20.67 ± 3.35 25.64 ± 4.66 to improve children’s motor skills. However, the results
a
Values are expressed as mean ± SD. of the current study require further research in terms of
evaluating the effect of core stabilization training on per-
formance. Future research should seek the best training
methods to influence the motor function by examining
between the control and experimental groups may be various protocols of core stabilization.
explained with respect to dynamic systems perspective
(25). Newell proposed that motor skills development takes
place based on the interaction between task constraints, Acknowledgments
organism and environment. It means that fundamental
motor skills emerge in a dynamic system that contains Authors wish to thank the children whose participa-
a certain task done by a learner with specific features in tion motivated them to better conduct the study better.
the environment. In this approach, known as dynamic
systems, factors (subsystems) of an organism (inclusive)
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4 Int J School Health. 2017; 4(1):e36010.

 Rostami R and Ghaedi M

Table 3. Covariance Analysis of the Groups Regarding the Locomotor and Object Control Skills

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