Bone mass, bone mineral density and muscle mass in professional golfers

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of long-term professional golf participation on whole-body and regional bone mass and density. Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry was performed on 15 male professional golfers and 18 sedentary individuals, matched for sex, race, age (29+/-1 and 25+/-1 years, respectively), body mass (79+/-2 and 74+/-2 kg), height (1.78+/-0.01 and 1.77+/-0.02 m) and percent body fat (20+/-2 and 21+/-2%; mean +/- sx). We found that long-term professional golf participation is not associated with significant increments in regional or whole-body bone mass or density. Neither the lumbar spine nor the femoral neck showed any noticeable enhancement of bone mass in professional golfers compared with controls from the same population. The only effect of professional golf participation on regional body composition was a 9% increase in muscle mass in the dominant arm (P < 0.05).

Shape-adjusted bone mineral density measurements in baboons: other factors explain primate skeletal element representation at Swartkrans

“…Many clinical studies of bulk BMD (or apparent density) continue to use PD technology in assessing bone mineral mass (i.e., mineral content) or mineral areal density g/cm 2 (e.g. [5,8,13,29,30,39]). While technologies more advanced than clinical CT or PD exist, many of these (e.g., pQCT and µCT) are currently less accessible than clinical CT, much less PD, due largely to even greater financial and time constraints of acquiring bulk BMD data from hundreds of ROIs.…”

Golf‐related injuries: A systematic review

“…It is shown that long-term professional golf participation is not associated with significant increments in regional or whole body bone mass or bone mineral density. Therefore, it can be assumed that bone mass or density cannot be altered by longterm professional golf participation, and injuries such as lumbar spine and femoral neck fractures probably have other origin types than playing golf (Dorado et al, 2002).…”

Dxa as a Tool for the Assessment of Morphological Asymmetry in Athletes

“…Malina and Buschang (2004) observed greater hypertrophy in the musculature of the dominant side in athletes. Also another authors (Calbet et al, 2001;Dorado et al, 2002) found, on the example of golfers, that they had muscle hypertrophy in the dominant compared with non-dominant arm under training influence. The right-left differences in morphological parameters (mainly in forearm girth, arm girth, elbow width) were observed also in 134 athletes aged 21-32 years, engaged in many different asymmetric movement sports like tennis, canoeing, kayaking and boxing (Krawczyk et al, 1998).…”

“…Many researches proved that morphological asymmetry -the difference between the right and the left sides of the body exist in sport (Dorado et al, 2002;Auerbach & Ruff 2006;Starosta, 1990) and it is very important to observe the scale of this phenomenon in order to its elimination if it will be necessary. Morphological asymmetry can concerns both side-toside differences between extremities, pelvis, trunk and total body with upper and lower body diversification.…”