A 2-year longitudinal follow-up of performance characteristics in Chinese male elite youth athletes from swimming and racket sports

Training in elite sport aims at the optimization of the athletic performance, and to control the athletes`progress in physiological, anthropometrical and motor performance prerequisites. However, in most sports, the value of longitudinal testing is unclear. This study evaluates the longitudinal deve...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2020-10, Vol.15 (10), p.e0239155-e0239155
Main Authors: Zhao, Kewei, Hohmann, Andreas, Faber, Irene, Chang, Yu, Gao, Binghong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age
Athletes
Badminton
Biology and Life Sciences
Body height
Body measurements
Body weight
Child development
Diagnostic systems
Endurance
Heart rate
Hemoglobin
Medicine and Health Sciences
Motor task performance
Optimization
Physiological aspects
Physiology
Racket sports
Social Sciences
Sport science
Sports
Sports training
Swimming
Table tennis
Teenage athletes
Teenage boys
Training
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Summary:Training in elite sport aims at the optimization of the athletic performance, and to control the athletes`progress in physiological, anthropometrical and motor performance prerequisites. However, in most sports, the value of longitudinal testing is unclear. This study evaluates the longitudinal development and the influence of intense training over 2-years on specific physiological performance prerequisites, as well as certain body dimensions and motor abilities in elite youth athletes. Recruited between 11-13 years of age at Shanghai Elite Sport school, the sample of student-athletes (N = 21) was categorized as the swimming group (10 athletes), and the racket sports group (11 players: 7 table tennis and 4 badminton players). The performance monitoring took place over two years between September 2016 and September 2018 and included 5 test waves. In all the test waves, the athletes were assessed by means of three physiological measurements (vital capacity, hemoglobin concentration, heart rate at rest), three anthropometric parameters (body height, body weight, chest girth), and two motor tests (back strength, complex reaction speed). Seven out of eight diagnostic methods exhibit medium to high validity to discriminate between the different levels of performance development in the two sports groups. The investigated development of the performance characteristics is attributed partly to the inherited athletic disposition as well as to the different sport-specific training regimens of the two sports groups.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0239155