After conducting a comprehensive literature search, a total of 20,498 records were identified. After removing 8,381 duplicates, 12,117 records were screened via title and abstract for suitability. After the removal of irrelevant records, 220 records were assessed for eligibility via full-text screening. Finally, 44 studies were included in the qualitative synthesis and 37 studies [47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83] were included in the meta-analysis (Fig. 1).

PRISMA flow diagram for searching and selection of the included studies

Study characteristics are presented in Table S2 (OSM). Most studies were conducted in Germany (n = 7) [49, 55, 61, 64, 70, 73, 74], followed by Switzerland (n = 6) [53, 54, 56, 62, 75, 76], the Netherlands (n = 6) [63, 69, 78, 84,85,86], Australia (n = 5) [47, 52, 57, 66, 87], Brazil (n = 3) [48, 50, 88], Italy (n = 3) [51, 65, 89], the USA (n = 2) [58, 72], Norway (n = 2) [71, 79], China (n = 2) [77, 81], Denmark (n = 1) [90], Finland (n = 1) [59], Greece (n = 1) [83], Ireland (n = 1) [82], Portugal (n = 1) [67], and Spain (n = 1) [80]. One study focused on children from Germany and Switzerland [68], and another targeted children from Germany and Oman [60]. Cross-sectional designs were used in 34 studies [48,49,50, 53,54,55, 57, 59, 60, 62,63,64,65,66,67, 69, 71, 73, 75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90], with the remainder consisting of longitudinal (n = 5) [47, 56, 61, 68, 74], randomised controlled trials (n = 3) [52, 58, 70] and non-randomised controlled trials (n = 2) [51, 72]. Most studies included children between the ages of 5 and 12 years (n = 39), with the remaining five studies focusing on adolescents (between the ages of 13 and 18 years) [53, 57, 59, 64, 87].

Locomotor skills were examined in 26 studies [47, 48, 50,51,52,53,54, 56, 58, 59, 62, 63, 67, 69, 72, 74,75,76,77,78, 81,