Australian Children's
Movement Skills Are Declining

Concerns have again been raised in Australia about children's physical inactivity and basic abilities such as balance, coordination and fundamental movement skills. What matters to me is that this is not only something appearing in the news. It closely matches what is happening in front of us in coaching.

The problem starts before sport-specific skill: children need the ability to move

When people think about a child's sporting ability, they often look first at sport-specific skills such as shooting, dribbling, kicking or swimming technique. But before those skills can work properly, children need the basic ability to control and move their own bodies.

That includes fundamental movement skills such as running, jumping, throwing, catching, stopping, balancing, changing direction and stabilising the body.

The Australian Sports Commission describes Physical Literacy as including the skills, knowledge, behaviours, confidence and motivation needed to be physically active for life. In other words, developing a child physically is not only about teaching one sport. Children need exposure to a broad range of movement and body-control tasks.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey 2023, released June 2026. Australian guidance recommends at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity every day for children and young people aged 5–17. These figures do not prove that every aspect of movement ability has uniformly declined, but they do show that many children are not getting enough daily physical activity.

Exercise & Sports Science Australia also raised concerns in 2026 about basic physical abilities including balance in preschool-aged children. More screen time, less outdoor play and fewer everyday opportunities to run, jump, throw and catch reduce the natural variety of movement experiences available to children.

The regression I clearly see after long breaks

Over nearly 10 years at SHIN FITNESS, I have seen many children return after extended periods away from training.

When they come back, I clearly see the following changes again and again:

This does not mean research proves that every child will decline in exactly the same way after the same length of break.

I am describing what I have consistently observed in the coaching environment after working with children at SHIN FITNESS for nearly 10 years.

The fundamentals that are often missing before basketball

SHIN FITNESS does not simply teach shooting and dribbling.

We place major emphasis on the following:

I coach many children who, before basketball skill even becomes the main issue, are missing the basic ability to move their own body the way they intend.

Practising dribbling alone is not enough if a child cannot run well, stop under control, hold posture or move correctly to either side. Sport-specific skill depends on the movement underneath it.

For more on what children should develop before basketball and why I recommend structured basketball fundamentals from around ages 7–8, see What Age Should Children Start Basketball?

The school-holiday problem: stopping the movement habit completely

Australia has several school-holiday periods each year.

Family trips are important. Children also need genuine breaks from school and organised sport. SHIN FITNESS is not against holidays or recovery.

The problem is when school holidays automatically become two or three weeks with no sport, no training and almost no normal physical activity at all.

If outdoor play and sport disappear during the break and are replaced mainly by screen time, the child's everyday movement volume can fall even further.

For a detailed explanation of why SHIN FITNESS continues training during school holidays, see Why SHIN FITNESS Trains Throughout the School Holidays.

Three weeks off does not mean you return to exactly where you were three weeks ago

This is a very important point in the SHIN FITNESS coaching environment.

The three weeks away are not the only time that can be lost. After returning, time may also be needed to rebuild ball feel, footwork, timing, movement sharpness, concentration and the normal tempo of training.

On the calendar it may look like only a three-week break, but from a progress perspective, the child may lose more time than that.

I am not claiming that science guarantees a specific percentage loss after three weeks. The effect depends on age, previous activity level, what the child did during the break and training history.

But after years of coaching, I have repeatedly seen that children who are almost completely inactive for long periods do not return in the same state in which they left.

Why SHIN FITNESS does not stop training simply because it is a school holiday

At SHIN FITNESS, we do not stop training simply because it is a school holiday.

The reason is to keep children's progress moving across the whole year.

We do not evaluate development one week or one school term at a time.

This long-term structure is one of the major differences in the SHIN FITNESS approach.

If a break is unavoidable, keep it to around one week where possible

Family travel, visiting relatives and school commitments can sometimes make a break unavoidable.

When this happens, SHIN FITNESS recommends keeping the break to around one week where possible.

When more time is genuinely necessary, we generally recommend keeping it to around two weeks at most and returning to training as soon as practical after coming home.

Recovery is not the same as doing almost nothing for weeks

Because SHIN FITNESS emphasises consistency, some people may assume that we do not value rest. That is incorrect.

Recovery is clearly needed when:

Appropriate recovery is not the same as spending several weeks doing almost no physical activity.

SHIN FITNESS does not make every session the same high-intensity workout.

We combine lighter days, skill-focused days, higher-intensity days and game-focused days. This lets children recover when needed without completely breaking the training rhythm, making year-round consistency more realistic.

Why 3+ sessions per week is not simply about “training more”

For children who genuinely want to improve, SHIN FITNESS generally recommends consistent participation three or more times per week.

The reason is not simply that “more training is always better”.

Children miss sessions because of school events, illness, family commitments, travel and weather. If a child is only scheduled once or twice per week, one missed session can create a very long gap between training exposures.

Three or more sessions per week is a practical minimum designed to manage progress across the year and keep movement fundamentals, basketball skills, decision-making and training habits from repeatedly breaking down.

For a detailed discussion of weekly training frequency by age, see How Often Should Kids Train for Basketball?

The SHIN FITNESS Training Structure: Training + Recovery + Consistency

Long-term development is not about pushing a child to the limit every day, and it is not about shutting everything down every school holiday.

All three are necessary.

Training alone is not enough. Recovery alone does not create progress. And even good training and good recovery become difficult to build on if the child repeatedly has several weeks of complete shutdown.

What we are protecting is not the number of sessions — it is the child's progress

There is a clear reason SHIN FITNESS trains throughout the year and generally recommends consistent participation three or more times per week.

What we are trying to protect is not the number of training sessions itself.

It is the progress the child has already built.

And we want to avoid stopping that progress unnecessarily.

That is the basic idea behind the SHIN FITNESS Training Structure.

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