Most sports have a staged frame­work for long-term ath­lete de­vel­op­ment which varies de­pend­ing on the unique de­mands of the sport and the sport de­vel­op­ment path­way. A com­mon fac­tor in all frame­works is phys­i­cal lit­er­a­cy, which is the foun­da­tion for sport par­tic­i­pa­tion and sport­ing ex­cel­lence. Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Phys­i­cal Lit­er­a­cy As­so­ci­a­tion (2017), “Phys­i­cal lit­er­a­cy can be de­scribed as the mo­ti­va­tion, con­fi­dence, phys­i­cal com­pe­tence, knowl­edge and un­der­stand­ing to val­ue and take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for en­gage­ment in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties for life.”

Mo­ti­va­tion and con­fi­dence are the af­fec­tive com­po­nents of phys­i­cal lit­er­a­cy. They speak to one’s en­thu­si­asm for, en­joy­ment of, and self-con­fi­dence in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty as an in­te­gral part of life. Mo­ti­va­tion re­quires se­lect­ing fun, age-ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tiv­i­ties and cre­at­ing nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties for en­gage­ment in the ac­tiv­i­ties. To­day, play­ing videogames is a ma­jor com­peti­tor to en­gag­ing in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty. Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est sta­tis­tics from WePC (https://www.wepc.com/news/video-game-sta­tis­tics/#video-gam­ing-in­dus­try-overview), there are more than 2.5 bil­lion video gamers world­wide. Twen­ty-one per cent of this is com­prised of chil­dren of high school age or less. Ad­dic­tion to video gam­ing is a re­al con­cern and, in some coun­tries, video gam­ing ad­dic­tion dis­or­der is a doc­u­ment­ed ill­ness.

Tod­dlers and pre-school­ers should be en­gaged in ac­tive play sev­er­al times a day, whilst chil­dren aged 6 to 17 years should be en­gaged in a min­i­mum of 60 min­utes of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty dai­ly. This can in­clude free play at home as well as struc­tured ac­tive play at school. Tra­di­tion­al games like Chi­nese jump rope, hop­scotch, rounders, moral, clap­ping games, danc­ing, cat and rat, red light, stat­ues, as well as climb­ing trees and throw­ing stones at fruits all de­vel­op ba­sic move­ment skills that are an es­sen­tial part of phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of a child.

Phys­i­cal com­pe­tence is the phys­i­cal com­po­nent of phys­i­cal lit­er­a­cy. This refers to the ac­qui­si­tion of fun­da­men­tal mo­tor skills nec­es­sary for the phys­i­cal com­pe­tence and self-con­fi­dence in sport. The fo­cus be­tween ages 3 to 6 should be on mas­tery of ba­sic move­ment skill sets which al­low a child to suc­cess­ful­ly tran­si­tion to play­ing any sport. Fail­ure to de­vel­op these skill sets will re­sult in frus­tra­tion and fail­ure when at­tempt­ing to play a sport and, even­tu­al­ly, to a loss of mo­ti­va­tion to en­gage in any phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty. The fo­cus should be on play­ing for fun, not com­pe­ti­tion. Ag­gres­sive com­pe­ti­tion too earl y can re­sult in most los­ing in­ter­est in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty. There is on­ly one win­ner or one win­ning team in com­pe­ti­tion and chil­dren in their in­no­cence can be cru­el, teas­ing or taunt­ing ‘losers’ and caus­ing them to with­draw their en­thu­si­asm for phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Fun­da­men­tal skills that must be de­vel­oped fall un­der the broad head­ings of lo­co­mo­tor, ob­ject con­trol and bal­ance move­ments. Ba­sic lo­co­mo­tor skills to mas­ter in­clude run­ning, jump­ing, hop­ping, leap­ing, skip­ping, climb­ing and swim­ming. Ob­ject con­trol skills in­clude kick­ing, rolling or throw­ing an ob­ject, strik­ing a ball or oth­er ob­ject, catch­ing and stop­ping a ball, drib­bling with feet, hands and a stick and strik­ing an ob­ject with feet, hands and sticks/rack­ets. Bal­ance and sta­bil­i­ty skills in­clude spin­ning, twist­ing, turn­ing, stop­ping and chang­ing di­rec­tion, stretch­ing, body rolling and bal­anc­ing with the body in dif­fer­ent po­si­tions.

Tra­di­tion­al games, men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, can aid the de­vel­op­ment of phys­i­cal com­pe­tence. To­day, chil­dren are not ad­e­quate­ly ex­posed to these types of ac­tiv­i­ties, as phys­i­cal games have been re­placed by seden­tary videogames and in schools, out­door play­time has been re­duced or re­placed by in­door phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion the­o­ry. Many high schools do not in­clude phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion post third form. An­oth­er prac­tice which rais­es se­ri­ous con­cern is par­ents and coach­es mov­ing to­wards very ear­ly sport-spe­cif­ic train­ing. This will re­sult in poor ba­sic move­ment and fun­da­men­tal sport skills, overuse in­juries, ear­ly burnout and ear­ly re­tire­ment from com­pe­ti­tion and train­ing. This prac­tice is a threat to long-term ath­lete de­vel­op­ment.

Knowl­edge and un­der­stand­ing are the cog­ni­tive com­po­nents of phys­i­cal lit­er­a­cy. These cog­ni­tive com­po­nents in­clude the abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy and ex­press the es­sen­tial qual­i­ties that in­flu­ence move­ment, un­der­stand the health ben­e­fits of an ac­tive lifestyle, and ap­pre­ci­ate ap­pro­pri­ate safe­ty pre­cau­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty in dif­fer­ent con­texts.

It is im­por­tant for the links be­tween phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and safe­ty and health to be made at an ear­ly age. In­ad­e­quate at­ten­tion and em­pha­sis are placed on the use of safe­ty gears in school sports. In Sports Med­i­cine prac­tice, we see head trau­ma that could have been avoid­ed if the ath­lete had been wear­ing sport-spe­cif­ic hel­mets, leg in­juries that could have been pre­vent­ed with the use of shin guards and in­juries to the teeth and jaw that could have been pre­vent­ed with the wear­ing of mouth guards.

Life­time en­gage­ment in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties is the be­hav­iour­al com­po­nent of phys­i­cal lit­er­a­cy. It in­volves per­sons con­scious­ly carv­ing out time in their busy sched­ules to en­sure that dai­ly phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty is an in­te­gral part of their healthy lifestyle.

Dr Sharmel­la Roopc­hand-Mar­tin is head of the Mona Acad­e­my of Sport. She can be reached at sharmel­la.roopchand­martin@uwi­mona.edu.jm