Empowering primary school students, potential benefits of resistance training movement activities in physical education : narrative review

Physical education (PE) plays a central role in children’s and young people’s holistic development, enabling cognitive, psychomotor, and affective development while boosting healthy lifestyles and socialization. Children equipped with developed motor abilities, such as muscular strength and power, will be better prepared to learn motor performance skills and sustain the demands of learning and playing games and sports. A scientific literature search was conducted in January 2021 to identify all relevant controlled studies from January 2000 to 2021 on PE interventions and strategies based on resistance training to achieve PE outcomes. The review showed that exposure to resistance exercises in PE lessons might be beneficial for primary school students’ general physical fitness, motor performance skills proficiency, and learning diversified sport skills. Interventions that include muscular strength and power development can support adequate muscular fitness and motor performance skill proficiency to achieve primary school PE outcomes.