Associations between body composition and fundamental motor skill competency in children.

Different components of body composition (i.e., fat free mass) were associated with different aspects of fundamental motor skills competency. Excess body fat may be a morphological constraint to proficient locomotor performance when transporting the body through space. In contrast, body composition did not significantly predict object manipulation performance. More work is needed to understand the causality and directionality of this relationship; however, bio-electrical impedance analysis accounts for more variance in fundamental motor skills performance than body mass index in a field-based setting.