ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Children and Health
This article is part of the Research TopicIntegration of physical activity for academic excellence and health promotion in adolescents and school childrenView all 12 articles
Relationships Among Children's Muscular Strength, Neuromuscular Control, and Resilience
Provisionally accepted
- Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, United States
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Introduction: Children who participate in recess interventions have demonstrated an increase in upper and lower body muscular strength (MusS), neuromuscular control (NC), and resilience. However, to measure the effectiveness of recess interventions, identifying physical and psychological assessment relationships is necessary for reliability and consistency purposes. Thus, this study explored relationships and variable predictions between MusS, NC, and resilience assessments in fourth and fifth grade children at two time points during one school year. Methods: A total of 164 fourth-and fifth-grade children participated in MusS (standing broad jump, push-ups, single-leg three-hop, average grip strength), NC (side-step), and resilience (CYRM-R) assessments. A single Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was calculated in September (Time 1) and January (Time 2) to evaluate reliability for each assessment. Next, Pearson product correlations and multiple linear regression analyses were conducted for the assessment outcomes. Results: Time 1 and Time 2 had positive, moderate, and significant correlations among the following MusS assessments: standing broad jump and average single-leg three-hop, standing broad jump and push-up, and average single-leg three-hop and push-up (p < 0.01). NC and resilience had no meaningful correlations with other assessments. Regression analyses further revealed that push-up performance was a significant predictor of standing broad jump performance at Time 1 and Time 2 (p < 0.001). Conclusions: The MusS assessments were shown to be practical, reliable, time efficient, and low-cost for this age group. Therefore, these elements should be taken into consideration to measure the effectiveness of recess or physical activity interventions. Additionally, results revealed upper and lower body MusS assessment correlations existed. The standing broad jump and push-up relationship highlights the interconnective nature of upper and lower MusS. This raises the question of why resilience and NC were not related with each other or with MusS assessments. Given the exploratory nature and short duration of this study, further research is needed to validate these findings and to determine if there are more effective NC and resilience assessments to use with this age group.
Keywords: Assessment5, child performance4, fitness6, Muscular Strength1, neuromuscular contro2, resilience3
Received: 11 Nov 2025; Accepted: 09 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Wagner, Esposito, Braun-Trocchio, von Borck and Rhea. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lauren M Wagner
Deborah J Rhea
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