Physical inactivity has become the main risk factor in our population (Rezende et al., 2016; Bull et al., 2020) due to its contribution to the development of cardiovascular disease (Je et al., 2013), obesity, overweight, and diabetes (Bull et al., 2020; Michel et al., 2022). Despite this, the minimum physical activity (PA) guidelines and recommendations are clear that young people should engage in at least 60 min of moderate and vigorous physical activity per day, yet only than 20% of adolescents comply with these recommendations (WHO, 2021).

The promotion of healthy lifelong lifestyles justifies the use of resources to motivate and raise awareness of the reasons for and purposes for being more active (Frohlich and Potvin, 2008). Therefore, all interventions aimed at promoting PA should focus not only on the amount and intensity of physical activity (Cairney et al., 2019), but also on raising participants' awareness of why it is important to be active and to maintain sustainable PA habits over time. Therefore, changes in behavior and PA habits will provide a healthier lifestyle, reducing levels of sedentary lifestyles in childhood and adolescence (Pate et al., 2011; Chaput et al., 2020), as well as diseases associated with physical inactivity, such as obesity, diabetes, or mental illness, with PA as the main tool to achieve this (van Sluijs et al., 2021). The importance of all this is heightened by the knowledge that children's elementary school years are a critical period for the development of long-term healthy lifestyles (Conti and Heckman, 2013), as habits formed in childhood are more likely to persist into adulthood (Pérez-Navero et al., 2018).

Physical literacy (PL) is emerging as a highly useful tool not only for promoting long-lasting habits of PA over time (Borchers and Pieler, 2010), but also for understanding why young people are or are not physically active (Whitehead, 2010). While physical activity is defined as “any bodily movement produced by the contraction of skeletal muscles that increases energy expenditure above the resting metabolic rate” (Caspersen et al., 1985, p. 127), PL is different and refers to an individual's understanding, knowledge, physical competence, motivation, and ability to be physically active on a sustained basis over time (Whitehead, 2010).

Nevertheless, there in undoubtedly a need to increase the amount of PA time for young people. Given its importance, active breaks (AB) could be an excellent option to increase children's physical activity during breaks from learning tasks (Howie et al., 2014), providing intention and commitment to physical activity during these periods (Bailey et al., 2024). This type of practice has increased through several strategies (Howie et al., 2014), promoting not only physical but also psychological outcomes (Erwin et al., 2014). Furthermore, a recent review revealed that ~14% of PA interventions for children in Europe are based on AB (Porter et al., 2024). These interventions are mostly delivered during AB between classes, allowing them to be more active (McLellan et al., 2022). On the other hand, carrying out these activities during breaks in the school day (AB) could make a valuable contribution to promoting the practice of PA among schoolchildren (Hyndman, 2017).

Thus, the PA programs implemented during this period of time have shown how they help students to become more physically active, increasing not only the levels of physical activity but also the intensity with which the practice is performed (Ansón and García-Jiménez, 2017).

Currently, several studies have revealed how PL interventions have had positive effects on PL, both in extracurricular activities (Mandigo et al., 2019), and in physical education classes (Coyne et al., 2019). Studies on PL interventions during recess are scarce, but some studies implementing PA-based interventions have shown positive effects on PL (Mendoza-Munoz et al., 2022). Although no studies have been found that directly relate the positive effects of AB to PL, benefits of AB on academic performance (Petrigna et al., 2022), attention (Méndez-Giménez and Pallasá-Manteca, 2023), and concentration (Contreras Jordan et al., 2020; Fiorilli et al., 2021), wellbeing and PA habits (Petrigna et al., 2022; Peiris et al., 2022) have been reported. Thus, PL work during these periods could be highly beneficial for improving the domains of motivation (Méndez-Giménez and Pallasá-Manteca, 2023), physical competence, and daily physical activity time (Galle et al., 2020; Masini et al., 2020a).

Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of a 7-week AB intervention on PL and its domains in schoolchildren aged 8–12 years and to examine the body composition of participants before and after the intervention.

The characteristics of the participants in both the control and experimental groups are shown in Table 2. No significant differences were found between the control and experimental groups for any of the anthropometric variables or for age (p = 0.168; p = 0.508).

Table 3 shows the BMI and CAPL-2 scores for both the control and experimental groups, as well as the intergroup and intragroup differences.

Regarding the experimental group, all domain and subdomain scores of the CAPL were higher in the post-intervention assessment than pre-intervention. Significant im-provements were found in total PL (p < 0.001), as well as in all domains and subdomains except self-reported question (p = 0.085), Intrinsic motivation (p = 0.617) and K&U domain (p = 0.344).

About intergroup differences, the results reported no differences between the control and experimental groups in the pretest, except for the CAMSA test, where the score was higher in the control group than in the experimental group (p = 0.002). In the case of the post-test, significant improvements were detected in the experimental group with respect to the control, in the M&C domain and its subdomain's predilection and adequacy.

No intergroup or intragroup differences were reported for BMI.

The concept of PL has become a highly relevant and widely researched concept in recent years (Gilic et al., 2022), and has become a fundamental concept for schoolchildren's participation in a wider range of physical activities (Caldwell et al., 2020). Currently, several studies of PA programs have reported changes in PL levels of participants. These studies were conducted during Physical Education classes (Kriellaars et al., 2019) as well as during after-school activities (Mandigo et al., 2019; Bremer et al., 2020). However, only one study protocol was found that addressed the effects of an active breaks program on physical literacy, on which this study is based (Mendoza-Munoz et al., 2022).

The present study aimed to evaluate the effects of a 7-week active breaks intervention on PL and its domains in schoolchildren aged 8–12 years, also analyzing participants' body composition before and after the intervention. The results obtained reveal that the program was effective in improving general PL and in several specific domains, except for the K&U domain (p = 0.334), in which the EG scored higher than the CG, although without significant differences.

Activity during active breaks in the school day has been shown to be an excellent way to improve the health of schoolchildren, both in terms of reducing body fat, increasing speed and coordination (Aguilar-Jurado et al., 2020), as well as improving cognitive performance (Latorre-Román et al., 2021). In this sense, Vicedo et al. (2021) concluded that these periods represent valuable opportunities to increase children's physical activity time and help them reach the minimum recommended levels of healthy PA.

Because of its importance, it is inevitable to think about how AB could be used to improve health and, with it, the time dedicated to physical activity of schoolchildren. If we review systematic studies on AB (Vicedo et al., 2021), we find numerous interventions aimed at promoting PA, however, those that address the importance of AB to improve PL are less frequent. Promoting PL is critical, given its impact on health. Nevertheless, when considering the benefits of AB interventions, one could find and ideal tool and space to help schoolchildren adop a healthy lifestyle through PA and PL.

Although there are currently different tools that can assess the PL in schoolchildren, Shearer et al. (2021), in their systematic review of PL assessment tools, highlighted that the CAPL-2 is currently the most robust explicit assessment instrument at present, demonstrating validity and reliability in the assessment of PL. Thus, several studies have attempted to give visibility to the assessment of PL in schoolchildren in different countries through the CAPL-2 (Dania et al., 2020; Mendoza-Munoz et al., 2024; Hadier et al., 2024; Elsborg et al., 2021; Knisel et al., 2024; Li et al., 2020; Longmuir et al., 2015), showing that the level of PL in this population is low or “in progress” (Li et al., 2020; Longmuir et al., 2015; Dania et al., 2020).

Analyzing the evolution of each of the domains in both groups after the intervention, we can observe that in the DB domain, significant differences were found in the EG (p < 0.001), but not in one of its subdomains, despite obtaining a higher score in the post-assessment (Self-reported question; p > 0.05). Our results differ from those found by Mendoza-Munoz et al. (2022) who, in their 4-week study, found no significant improvements in this domain, which could be due to the duration of the intervention or to the contents of the intervention itself. On the other hand, Masini et al. (2020b), in their 14-week study of active breaks, showed significant improvements in the number of weekly steps taken by their participants. Similarly, Torrandell and Vidal-Conti (2021) found that those schoolchildren who were more active during breaks had a greater number of hours of physical activity during the week.

Therefore, the EG in our study may have increased significantly in this domain after receiving more encouragement to engage in daily physical activity, relative to the CG, and the duration of the intervention may be entirely relevant in empowering and stimulating participants sufficiently to increase their daily and weekly physical activity time. The fact that significant differences were found in a more objective test such as the number of steps participants took per week, compared to a more subjective test such as answering a self-reported question about the number of days they were physically active, may support the idea that the intervention time was sufficient to motivate students to increase their daily steps, but not to make them aware that by doing the activities during breaks, they were simultaneously increasing the number of days they were physically active. Future interventions based on AB should further investigate the long-term effects on participants's daily physical activity routines.

On the other hand, the EG obtained significant improvements in the PC domain and its subdomains, in contrast to the CG, which did not obtain significant improvements in any of the subdomain but did obtain significant improvements in the final score of the domain. One possible explanation for this could be that each of the subdomains achieves higher scores, though not sufficient to yield significant improvements individually. Therefore, these improvements might have accumulated to influence the overall score of the domain, resulting in a significant change in the global computation.

The significant differences found in the EG in this domain may be due to the relationship between PL, health, and fitness (Caldwell et al., 2020). In this way, PL becomes a determining factor in the development of children's physical fitness (Gilic et al., 2022). Increasing pupils' motor engagement time during active breaks, through activities that promote the development of cardiorespiratory capacity, strength, and agility may be fundamental for their development. In this regard, Mendoza-Munoz et al. (2022) reported significant improvements in this domain, as well as in the CAMSA and PACER subdomains. These results, similar to those observed in our study, could also have been influenced by the association demonstrated in various studies between the general level of PL and cardiorespiratory capacity (Lang et al., 2018) and agility (Mandigo et al., 2019). Thus, the significant improvements in the general level of PL might have contributed to advancements in this domain and its subdomain.

Regarding the M&C domain, our results show significant differences in the total score of the domain and its subdomains for the EG. However, in the subdomain of intrinsic motivation, no significant differences were found for this group (p = 0.617). Furthermore, a significant increase was also observed in the EG compared to CG after the intervention. Therefore, this domain could become the most relevant factor for children to reach the minimum recommendations for physical activity (Belanger et al., 2018), since both the motivation of students to be active and the place of activity have a positive influence on increasing their activity (Lang et al., 2018). In this regard, several physical activity-based interventions (Abós et al., 2016), and PL (Bremer et al., 2020) have reported improvements in motivation level, reflected in a willingness to participate in a greater number of physical activities and sports after their interventions (Bremer et al., 2020).

No significant improvements were found in the knowledge and understanding domain, although a positive trend was observed in the EG. The literature has shown that knowledge about physical activity is an essential component of the cognitive domain of PL (Gilic et al., 2022), although its direct effects on physical activity practice are still unknown. However, several studies have shown positive relationships of this domain with PC (Li et al., 2020) and M&C (Li et al., 2020; Knisel et al., 2024). Due to the influence of PA on the children's cognitive performance (Reloba et al., 2016), it could be that due to the low intensity of the task proposed during the intervention, or the short time spent performing PA daily, no significant differences were found in this domain (Luque-Illanes et al., 2021). In addition, the limitations of the intervention may have been insufficient to facilitate understanding and retention of the knowledge necessary for children to recognize the value of physical activity in their lives. This opens up a line of future research where future studies could investigate the importance of knowledge and understanding of physical activity and its practice, as well as explore whether the intervention time is limited to achieve meaningful learning.

In terms of body composition, no significant differences in BMI were found in either group, highlighting the importance of a longer intervention duration to observe substantial changes in this variable (Henaghan et al., 2008). However, given that several studies have reported differences in students' PL levels as a function of BMI (Delisle Nystrom et al., 2018; Mendoza-Munoz et al., 2021), further research should study the long-term effects of physical literacy on schoolchildren and explore the benefits of physical literacy on schoolchildren's body composition.

One of the main strengths of this study is that it allows us to know and support the findings found by Mendoza-Munoz et al. (2022) about the benefits of implementing active breaks programs on PL in schoolchildren. However, the main difference with respect to that study is not only the duration, but also in the type of activities and content addressed throughout the intervention. In addition, the use of the CAPL-2 to measure the PL in schoolchildren allows it to be assessed in a comprehensive and objective manner in its different domains. Therefore, the findings of this study have important applications for health promotion, physical education, and educational policy. The implementation of this type of program could help not only to improve PL, but also to know the level of PL of schoolchildren, making it possible to take measures in the different intervention programs by adapting them to the needs of all students, since a child with a low level of PL will tend to avoid physical activity as much as possible, will have little confidence in their physical capacity and will not be motivated to participate in structured physical activities (Tremblay et al., 2018), therefore, physical literacy in all schoolchildren will be fundamental.

The results of this study support the positive effects on physical literacy and its domains of an activity-based active breaks program covering all domains. In contrast to other studies, this work was notable for the duration and specific focus of the activities and for the application of the CAPL-2 for a comprehensive assessment of physical literacy domains. These findings have important implications for the design of intervention programs and the formulation of educational policies that promote physical literacy and health in schoolchildren. The implementation of active breaks could contribute to improving the level of PL in students, which is crucial to prevent physical inactivity in those with low confidence and motivation to engage in structured physical activity.

In conclusion, active breaks programs specifically designed to improve physical literacy offer a promising avenue for strengthening physical health and engagement in physical activity in schoolchildren. Future studies could focus on interventions of longer duration and in different contexts to explore the long-term effects on children's physical behavior and body composition, thus facilitating the adoption of active and healthy lifestyles from an early age.