The relationship between biological maturation and upper and lower limb performance in young volleyball players
VOLLEYBALL, MATURATION, STRENGTH, PERFORMANCE
In volleyball, many aspects can interfere in the performance of an athlete, mainly in the base categories, when the young athletes suffer several biological influences on their body, about these influences we can detach the biological maturation, that in the literature the relation with the performance of superior and inferior members are not well defined. In this sense, the objective of the present study was to analyze the relationship of the biological maturation on the performance of young volleyball athletes. This was a cross-sectional observational study with a sample composed of 71 participants, aged 8 years and older. Maturation was analyzed by peak height velocity (PHV), skeletal age by the model proposed by Cabral. To evaluate anaerobic capacity we used the RAST. The muscular power of the upper limbs was analyzed by the medicine ball throw test, and of the lower limbs by the vertical jump performed on a contact platform with an interruption system. The maturation had influence on the anaerobic capacity and fatigue index. Maturation showed a relationship with anaerobic capacity between maturational stages in comparing anaerobic power in Rast (Early-PHV: 256.4; Circum-PHV: 171.3; Late-PHV 105.7). The fatigue index of the participants also showed a strong influence of maturity, which stated that the more mature, the more superior in anaerobic capacity and the more prone to fatigue. The relative power stood out the upper limb power (Effect size: 1.5.). was found to correlate upper limb lean mass with upper limb power (r= 0.73; P= 0.001) and weak correlation of lean mass with lower limb power (r= 0.30; P= 0.2). Comparing the different maturational stages we conclude that the more advanced in relation to the stages the higher the anaerobic power, the higher the relative power of upper and lower limbs, and the higher the relation with fatigue index.