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What Are the Benefits of Gross Motor Skills?

Gross motor skills are a category of abilities that means a person is in control of their larger muscles. The torso, arms and legs are all areas of gross muscle. Children develop their control of gross muscles from birth, moving their head and torso until they sit, crawl, and eventually learn how to stand and walk. The development and control of these muscles have a number of benefits and advantages.

  1. Fine Motor Control

    • One of the major benefits of gross motor skills is that they will lead in time to the development and refinement of a person's fine motor skills. Gross motor skills deal with large muscle groups and larger actions, whereas fine motor skills deal with the smaller muscle groups that handle things such as grasping. Fine motor skills are necessary for artists and typists, and for writing with a pen or pencil. As such, children who develop their gross motor skills more thoroughly will also have a more thorough control of their fine motor skills in the future.

    Athletics

    • Having a good grasp of gross motor skills is extremely beneficial in athletic competitions. Being able to run, jump, throw and lift weights all involve a great deal of gross motor skill. The better people know and can use the larger muscles in their body, and the better those muscle groups work together, the better their performance in a given sport will be. Fortunately, athletes can learn gross motor skills and improve them with practice. They more they work at it, the better they will be.

    Spatial Relations

    • As children develop their gross motor skills through play, including running, jumping and climbing, they will begin to understand through the exercise of their own body how they relate to the rest of the world. Practice of gross motor skills improves depth perception, balance and a sense of a lateral world. As such, those who regularly work on these muscle groups tend to have a more finely tuned sense of balance, as well as where they are in relation to anything else around them as they move.

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