The purpose of the present study was to examine age-related changes in isokinetic leg flexion and extension peak torque (PT), PT/body weight (PT/ BW), and F*T/fat-free weight (PT/FFW) in young wrestlers. Male wrestlers (A= 108; age M ± SD = 11.3 + 1.5 years) volunteered to be measured for peak torque at 30, 180, and 300° • s'. In addition, underwater weighing was performed to determine body composition characteristics. The sample was divided into six age groups (8.1-8.9, n = 10; 9.0-9.9, n= 11; 10.0-10.9, n = 25; 11.0-11.9, n = 22; 12.0-12.9, n = 28; 13.0-13.9, n= 12), and repeated measures ANOVAs with Tukey post hoc comparisons showed increases across age for PT, PT/BW, and PT/FFW. The results of this study indicated that there were age-related increases in peak torque that could not be accounted for by changes in BW or FFW. It is possible that either an increase in muscle mass per unit of FFW, neural maturation, or both, contributes to the increase in strength across age in young male athletes.Typically, during childhood and adolescence, strength increases coincide with changes in body weight (BW) and fat-free weight (FFW) (1, 15,16). Recent studies of high school wrestlers, however, have reported age-related increases in isokinetic peak torque (PT) for leg extension (7), forearm flexion (7), arm flexion and extension (5), and aim horizontal adduction and abduction (29) that could not be accounted for by changes in BW or FFW. The physiological mechanism underlying this age effect for strength increases (independent of FFW) in adolescent athletes is unknown, but may be attributable to an increase across age in muscle mass per unit of FFW, neural maturation, or both (5, 7,8,9,26,29).Compared to high school athletes (5,6, 7,10,29), little is known about the factors that contribute to the nonnal growth and maturation of strength in younger athletes (23,25,26). For example, with the exception of a recent investigation of elite runners by Thoriand et al. (26), no studies have examined the covariate influ-