Effects of Crawling before Walking: Network Interactions and Longitudinal Associations in 7-Year-Old Children

Background: To study the impact of crawling before walking (CBW) on network interactions among body composition, the cardiovascular system, lung function, motor competence and physical fitness, at age 7, and to assess the longitudinal association between CBW and body composition, the cardiovascular system, lung function, motor competence, physical fitness and physical activity parameters, at age 7. Method: CBW, body composition, cardiovascular system, lung function, motor competence, physical fitness and physical activity were assessed in seventy-seven healthy Caucasian children. Results: Network analyses revealed that the crawling group had a greater number of links among all the studied variables compared with the non-crawling group. In the longitudinal study, using multiple regression analyses, crawling was independently associated with fat mass (%), fat-to-muscle ratio and systolic blood pressure, with models explaining up to 56.3%, 56.7% and 29.9% of their variance, respectively. Conclusions: CBW during child’s development is a possible modulator in the network interactions between body systems and it could influence future metabolic and cardiovascular health.