The one head-to-head test found fine skills suffering, not gross ones
Only one supplied study set out to compare the two skill types under the same conditions. Male students were kept awake for four or six hours and then tested on both fine and gross motor learning. The reported result was a reduction in fine motor learning after the sleep loss [1]. Gross motor learning was not described as impaired in the same way.
That is a single study in a single group — male students — and the available summary gives no effect sizes or details of the gross-skill result. So it is a real signal pointing away from the question's premise, not a settled verdict. It does mean the common assumption that big, whole-body skills are the fragile ones is not supported by the only direct comparison we have.
Why whole-body skills might survive a bad night better than finger skills
Gross motor skills — running, jumping, throwing, whole-body sequences — are learned through large, repeated movements that recruit broad muscle groups and are practiced with the whole body. Fine motor skills depend on small, precise movements, like the sequential finger tasks used in sleep-and-motor-learning work [4]. Precision of that kind may simply have less room to absorb a rough night.
A review of the adult literature frames sleep as supporting the learning of novel gross motor skills, and discusses sleep deprivation as the flip side of that relationship [3]. The framing implies gross learning is sleep-sensitive, but sensitivity is not the same as being more sensitive than fine learning. Nothing in that review establishes a ranking between the two.
Most of the evidence tests sleep's benefits, not sleep loss
A large share of the relevant work asks whether sleep helps rather than whether losing it hurts. One line of research compared performance on sequential finger tasks and discrete motor tasks after a night of sleep, spanning both fine and gross components, but it did not deprive anyone of sleep [4]. Showing that sleep aids a skill does not tell you how much damage a short night does, or whether that damage differs by skill type.
The gross motor work has its own gap. A 2024 project on whole-body sequence learning compares sleep with wakefulness after training by motor imagery — mentally rehearsing a movement rather than physically practicing it — in young and older adults [2]. It is designed to test whether sleep-dependent consolidation occurs for a gross task and how that differs with age, not to compare gross against fine skills. Its results are still pending, so it cannot yet weigh in on the comparison.
What this means if you are the one practicing
If you are deciding where to spend your worry after a short night, the direct evidence gives the nod to fine skills: the comparison study found fine motor learning reduced after four to six hours of sleep deprivation, with no matching report for gross skills [1]. Treat that as a hint rather than a rule, since it rests on one small study of male students.
For gross skills, the honest position is that we know sleep is involved in learning them [3], and that a major study of sleep and whole-body learning is still in progress [2]. Nobody has yet run the clean experiment — same task difficulty, same amount of sleep lost, fine and gross measured side by side — that would settle the ranking. Until then, the question's premise looks more likely to be backwards than correct.
Sources used in this answer
Effect Sleep Deprivation on Learning of Fine and Gross Motor Skill in Male Students
In male students, four or six hours of sleep deprivation led to reduced learning of a fine motor skill, while gross motor learning was not reported as impaired.
Effects of sleep on gross motor sequence learning by motor imagery in young and older adults
A planned study compares sleep versus wakefulness for consolidating a whole-body gross motor sequence learned through motor imagery in young and older adults, without addressing fine motor skills.
Adult gross motor learning and sleep: Is there a mutual benefit?
A review examines the mutual relationship between sleep and learning of novel gross motor skills in adults, covering both sleep's benefits and sleep deprivation.
Benefits of sleep in motor learning–prospects and limitations
A series of studies tested the effect of a night's sleep on newly acquired motor skills across sequential finger tasks and discrete motor tasks, without any sleep deprivation.