ABSTRACT
Introduction:
The practice of basketball during adolescence increases the body size and functional performance. Basketball involves short-time maximum effort for changes of direction, which use anaerobic metabolism and agility.
Objective:
To examine the variation in performance in the Line-drill Test in adolescent basketball players (n=59, age 9-15 years) in relation to the stage of somatic maturity (estimated age of peak growth velocity [PGV]) and the variation in body size.
Methods:
We considered chronological age, estimated time for the age of PGV by the maturity offset protocol, height and body mass measured by anthropometry, and performance in the Line Drill Test. Proportional allometric models were used to control the variation associated with the body size, chronological age, and maturity of inter-individual variation in the Line-drill Test.
Results:
We found a high negative linear relationship between performance in the Line-drill Test and chronological age (r=-0.64, 95% IC -0.77 - -0.46, p<0.01). The relationship between performance on the Line-drill Test and the time until the age of PGV proved to be non-linear, indicating slowdown in performance variation, approximately from the age of PGV and one year after the predicted PGV. The allometric models showed a negative relationship between body size and performance in the Line-drill Test. The amplitude of variance explained in the proportional allometric models ranged from 0.28 to 0.48. Negative exponents of small magnitude were observed for chronological age and the indicator of maturity being, however, significant and with reduced amplitude (-0.05 to -0.06)
Conclusion:
The use of allometric models to control the influence of body size can potentially help to understand the development of agility performances in adolescent basketball players.
Keywords:
athletes; basketball; athletic performance.
