Comparison of Components of Physical Fitness, Motor Skills, and Perceived Physical in obese and Non-obese children

Obesity and overweight are not only known as the main cause of non-transmissible diseases such as blood pressure, blood lipids, diabetes, and myocardial infarction, but also have an impact on other aspects of human life. Thus, the purpose of this study is to compare the components Physical fitness, perceived physical fitness, and fundamental motor skills in obese and non-obese children. The research method was causal-comparative. To this purpose, 160 primary school students in Karaj in 2012 were selected by convenient sampling and assigned to the body mass index in two obese and non-obese groups. To collect data, the perceived physical fitness questionnaire (Abadie, 1988), test of gross motor development-2 (Ulrich, 2000), and test of physical fitness components were used. Data were analyzed using two way and multivariate variance analysis. Two-way variance analysis of data showed that there is a significant difference between the components of physical fitness and fundamental motor skills between girls and boys (p< 0.05). In these variables, boys had better performance than than non-obese girls and children. Also, multivariate analysis of variance showed that there was a significant difference between the agility, speed, flexibility and power subscale in obese and non-obese groups (p< 0.05). According to the results of this study, obesity causes decrease in physical fitness and level of motor skills in children.