Features of total body sizes and anthropometric torso sizes in female volleyball players of mesomorphic somatotype

Abstract

Determination of constitutional parameters that are inherent in highly skilled athletes of a particular sport can serve as reliable predictive markers during sport selection. But the last time an indisputable fact is the somatotypological conditionality of individual sizes that characterize the external structure of the body, and the visceral structures of the organism. The purpose of the work is to establish differences in the anthropometric dimensions between young women volleyball players of high level of athletic skill and non-sports young women belonging to the mesomorphic somatotype. On the base of the research center of the National Pirogov Memorial Medical University, we conducted an anthropo-somatotypological study of 127 female volleyball players of youth age (from 16 to 20 years) with a high level of athletic skill. Sports experience in all cases was greater than 3 years. From the database of research center of the National Pirogov Memorial Medical University was selected 140 practically healthy young women of the same age who were not engaged in sports. Anthropometric measurements were carried out using the method of V.V. Bunak (1941), somatotypological research – according to the estimated modification of the Heath-Carter method (1990). After the conducted somatotyping, it was found that 29 volleyball players and 33 non-sports young women belonged to the mesomorphic type of constitution. The analysis of the obtained results is carried out in the licensed package of Statistica 5.5 using nonparametric methods of evaluation of indicators. In the volleyball players of the mesomorphic somatotype, compared to young women who are not engaged in sports of the same constitutional type, we have found a significantly larger length of the body, the mass and area of the body surface, the height of the suprasternal, pubic, shoulder anthropometric points, chest cords, transverse mid and lower chest and sagittal middle-thigh diameters, intervertebral distance of the pelvis and its external conjugates. Relatively smaller in female volleyball players of mesomorphic type of physique was the thickness of the skin-fat folds under the shoulder blade. One can conclude that within the same somatotype there are significant changes in the anthropometric parameters, in particular total body and longitudinal, transverse, front and rear body dimensions, which is affected by the body of modern young women volleyball players with mesomorphic somatotype, under the influence of intensive loads.