BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1668266
This article is part of the Research TopicPsychological Factors in Physical Education and Sport - Volume VIView all 29 articles
Football training vs martial arts training: how are they related to executive function skills in 5–6-year-old boys?
Provisionally accepted
- 1Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
- 2Federal Scientific Center of Psychological and Multidisciplinary Research (FSC PMR), Moscow, Russia
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Sports training is one of the most popular extracurricular activities among preschool and elementary school children. The aim of this pilot study was to compare executive function skills in preschool boys who participated in football training and those who undertook martial arts training. The participants were sixty (60) typically developing 5–6-year-old boys from large Russian cities. There were two groups with 30 boys in each group: a football group and a martial arts group. Inclusion criteria were as follows: (a) male gender; (b) boys did not attend any extracurricular activities other than their football training or martial arts training; (c) the duration of football or martial arts training session was more than 30 minutes; (d) boys attended these trainings for at least 6 months and no more than 2 years. Caregivers reported on the specifics of child's attendance at sports training and child's age, maternal education, and family income, which were used as control variables. The results indicated that boys involved in football training had significantly higher spatial component of visuospatial working memory compared to boys involved in martial arts training. Taken together, these findings suggest that football training compared to martial arts training in 5–6-year-old boys may have more potential in terms of developing spatial component of visuospatial working memory. The results of this pilot study could serve as a basis for further investigation on this topic.
Keywords: Executive function skills, open-skilled sports, Football training, Martial arts training, boys
Received: 06 Aug 2025; Accepted: 29 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yakushina, Rudnova, Dmitrieva, Pashenko and Chichinina. 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:
Anastasia Yakushina, anastasia.ya.au@yandex.ru
Natalia A. Rudnova, rudnova.na@yandex.ru
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