Motor abilities, body image and physical self-perception in obese and non-obese children

The aim of the study was to investigate the relationships amongst motor abilities, body satisfaction and physical self-perception in middle school students from the south of Italy. Fitness tests of standing long jump (SLJ), 2 kg medicine-ball throw (MBT), 105 m shuttle run, 20 m and 30 m sprint were administered to 155 obese (40 boys and 37 girls) and non-obese (40 boys and 38 girls) children (12.490.9 years). Body discrepancy (BD) was measured through Collins’ Child Figure Drawings (1991), while physical self-efficacy was assessed by the Perceived Physical Ability Scale. Perceived CO, BF and SP were assessed using an Italian reduced version of the Physical Self-Description Questionnaire. Our findings confirm that obese children showed poorer performances on weight-bearing tasks, greater body dissatisfaction and lack confidence in their physical ability than normal-weight peers. This study provides evidence on the important role physical activity (PA) can play to raise physical self-perception of obese children with an improvement of their motor abilities.