Physiological, Anthropometric, and Motor Characteristics of Elite Chinese Youth Athletes From Six Different Sports

Abstract

Several talent selection programs in elite sport schools are based on motor diagnostics for the purpose of recommending or transferring promising talents to general groups of sports; game sports, combat sports or endurance sports, and to more concrete sports such as gymnastics, skiing, or tennis. However, the predictive value of such testing is unclear. This study evaluated the concurrent validity of physiological performance prerequisites, body dimensions, as well as specific motor performances. The sample consisted of N = 97 youth athletes from all ninth grade classes of a Shanghai Elite Sport school belonging to six different sports including basketball ( n = 7), fencing ( n = 23), judo ( n = 20), swimming ( n = 10), table tennis ( n = 15), and volleyball ( n = 22). The performance diagnosis took place between September 2016 and March 2017, and comprised five physiological measurements of the heart rate at rest, vital capacity, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and hemoglobin concentration in the blood, eighteen anthropometric parameters, and two motor tests on back strength and complex reaction speed. The aim of the study was to investigate whether U15 age group athletes participating in six different sports already at this age show a sport specific anthropometric, motor performance, and physiological profile which is in line with the specific requirements of each of the sports. A discriminant analysis and a Neural Network (Multilayer Perceptron) were used to test whether it is possible to discriminate between athletes of the six sports and to assign each individual of the Under-15 athletes to his own sport on the basis of a unique profile of the morphological, motor, and physiological prerequisites. All diagnostic methods exhibited medium to high validity to discriminate between the six different sports. The relevance of the eighteen body dimensions, five physiological measures, and two motor tests for talent identification was confirmed.

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

“…Body height in swimming is widely recognized as an important talent factor and performance characteristic [53]. In table tennis, a low body weight as well as a short lower leg length [24] might enhance primarily the players'agility which plays an important role in elite table tennis performance [54].…”

“…The superiority of swimmers over athletes from the individual game sports in VC was confirmed by Bloomfield et al [23] as they found better values for 11-12 years old swimmers in comparison to tennis players of the same age. Also Zhao et al [24] found VC values of M = 5,071 ml (SD = 863) in Chinese U15/U16 age group swimmers, which were significantly higher than in a group, comprising youth athletes from five different other sports. In contrast, in that study VC was systematically lower in table tennis athletes (M = 3,823 ml; SD = 423).…”

“…In swimming [32], the power of the squat movement, which is highly dependent on dynamic BS, is a relevant predictor for the lunge speed and swimming power, respectively. Zhao et al [24] reported on a higher level of dynamic BS in U15/U16 Chinese table tennis athletes compared to a group of other sports. Furthermore, the high reliability of the deadlift test (ICC = 0.99; [33]) allowed for the use of this measurement in all three sports groups included in this study.…”

“…In combination with the VC, the chest girth (CG) is an adaptation effect of the respiratory muscles in well-trained swimmers [25]. For a Chinese U15/U16 age group of swimmers, Zhao et al [24] reported a chest circumference of M = 90.3 (SD = 4.3), which was significantly greater than in the group of the youth athletes from the other five sports.…”

Studi motivasi siswa dalam mengikuti pembelajaran pendidikan jasmani olahraga kesehatan

“…Jenis kegiatan yang ada dalam kurikulum penjasorkes pada SMP Negeri 3 Padang meliputi kegiatan pokok dan kegiatan pilihan. Kegiatan pokok meliputi senam, olahraga permainan (bolabasket, bolavoli dan sepakbola) dan atletik (Paz et al, 2019;Simon et al, 2019;Zhao et al, 2019). Sedangkan kegiatan pilihan meliputi aktifitas ritmik, olahraga luar sekolah atau petualangan dan olahraga potensial yang berkembang di daerah (Brymer & Feletti, 2019;Eastabrook & Collins, 2019;Siedentop et al, 2019).…”