Purpose
The purpose of our study was to analyze body composition and spiroergometric data of young (14–15 years) elite level ball sport players. We suggested that three-ball sports (handball, soccer, and basketball) share common performance indicators, as each ball sport is primarily characterized by rapid intermittent movements. A high level of both aerobic and anaerobic performance is necessary to achieve success in these sports.
We hypothesized, that due to the young age of the participants, they will find difficult to perform at their plateau, during laboratory-based treadmill testing. We priorly expected, that there will be only a limited number of significant differences in spiroergometric variables. However, training adaptations induced by prolonged intensive exercise may occur even among the adolescent athletes, which may facilitate the identification of certain performance (physiological) variables, that specifically characterizes each sport (handball, basketball, and soccer). This way more sport-specific, individualized selection programs may be developed by sports professionals. We suggested that focusing on certain performance variables may help coaches to predict future talents in a more advanced way.
Participants
One-hundred and ten, handball (n = 29), basketball (n = 41) and soccer (n = 40) players male and female from local clubs in North-Eastern Hungary, they represented the elite level of their sports. Among the participants 79 were males, 31 were females (Table 1).
Table 1
Participants of the study
| Male | Female | Total |
Handball | 14 | 15 | 29 |
Basketball | 25 | 16 | 41 |
Soccer | 40 | 0 | 40 |
Total | 79 | 31 | 110 |
We defined elite athletes as a registered member of academies participating in regular practices (5d/week), competing at the highest national level. The athletes were selected according to the above-mentioned objective standards by head coaching personnel; therefore, selection bias was minimized. The average age of the male and female participants was 14.52 and 14.43, respectively. The average training age of the handball, basketball, and soccer players was 5.00, 5.38, 5.20 respectively at the time of the investigation.
Procedures
They participated in performance analysis, the protocol included body composition and a standard spiroergometric test. The measurements were taken place at the 2018-19 season during the preparatory phase, in February. The training cycle and competition schedule of the athletes were fully considered, the timing of the measurements made it possible to adopt appropriate alterations in the training regimen, if necessary. We measured body composition and physiological parameters utilizing an In Body 720 Body Composition Analyzer device (In Body Co, Cerritos, USA) and a standard Bruce treadmill protocol. Spiroergometric parameters were monitored utilizing Ergo Stress, TSE-01 telemetric cardiovascular analyzing system (MDE Gmbh, Walldorf, Germany), and an Ergo-Fit Cardio Line 400 Trac treadmill (Ergo-Fit Gmbh, Pirmasens, Germany). Although we were aware of the limitations of the Bruce protocol in elite sport, we chose this protocol as a safer alternative for younger, inexperienced athletes. The termination of the test was set either at the point of volitional fatigue when VO2 plateau or certain RER (1.15) values were reached [17].
Statistical analysis
We chose a cross-sectional design, to analyze the results of various measurements. Out of numerous anthropometric and body composition variables, we further selected seven: Body Weight, Body Mass Index (BMI), Percent Body Fat (PBF), Fat-Free Mass (FFM), Body Fat Mass (BFM), Skeletal Muscle Mass (SMM), and Growth Score (Table 2.).
Table 2
Body composition data of all participants
Gender | Age | Body Weight (kg) | Body Mass Index (BMI) | Percent Body Fat (PBF) | Fat-Free Mass (FFM, kg) | Body Fat Mass (BFM, kg) | Skeletal Muscle Mass (SMM, kg) | Growth Score |
Mean | Mean | Mean | Mean | Mean | Mean | Mean | Mean |
F | 14.52 | 59.80 | 20.23 | 15.81* | 50.96 | 7.76 | 28.42 | 105.00 |
M | 14.43 | 62.72 | 20.37 | 12.12* | 52.40 | 7.55 | 29.26 | 100.00 |
* p < 0.05 |
We suggested that these variables realistically represent the overall physical fitness and maturation status of the athletes [18]. Ten dependent spiroergometric variables: peak/Load (W), peak/HR (1/min), peak/VE (l/min), peak/BF (1/min), peak/Vtex (l), peak/VO2 (ml/min), peak/VCO2 (ml/min), peak/VO2/kg (ml/min), peak/RER, peak/O2 pulse (ml) were selected to test our hypothesis. First, a standard t-test was conducted to analyze differences in the above-mentioned ten dependent variables between two groups of male and female athletes. To conduct an in-depth analysis a Levene test was applied to test the homogeneity of variances, to assess the equality of variances for a given variable calculated for three (soccer, handball and basketball players) groups. Analysis of Variances (ANOVA) and the Welch test was used for calculating differences among group means if any. Finally, the Tukey and the Tamhane Post Hoc tests were applied to conduct multiple comparisons of group means.