Peculiarities of the chest’s size in female volleyball players of different constitutional types

Abstract

During qualified sport selection special attention should be paid to those features and abilities that have a great influence on the effectiveness, and those, that are mainly under the influence of genetic factor. Such morphogenetic markers of sports selection include, firstly, the constitutional features of athletes, in particular the shape of the chest. The purpose of work is to determine the differences between the anthropometric dimensions of the chest between female volleyball players of high level of athletic skill and non-sportsmen, who belonged to different constitutional types. On the base of the Scientific-Research Center of the Vinnytsya National Pirogov Memorial Medical University an anthropo-somatotypological investigation of 113 female volleyball players of high level athletic skill (from 16 to 20 years old) was done. The control group included 204 practically healthy young women, who were not engaged in sports of the corresponding age. Anthropometric research was performed according to the V. V. Bunak (1941) method, somatotypological study was based on the estimated modification of the Heath-Carter method (1990). In young women, who were not engaged in sports, more than in half of the cases were indicated constitutional types, which were characterized by good development of fatty body composition. Between female volleyball players were dominated individuals with mesomorphic somatotype (26.66%), ectomorphic somatotype (23.01%), ecto-mesomorphic somatotype (23.89%), and representatives of the intermediate somatotype (23.01%) were almost uniformly represented in the sample. The analysis of the results was carried out in the licensing program "Statistica 5.5" using nonparametric methods of estimating the parameters. We have found that the female volleyball players of the ectomorphic somatotype have the smallest anthropometric dimensions of the chest, as compared with athletes of other constitutional groups. In the mesomorphs female volleyball players all transverse and the most of overall sizes of the chest were the largest. Parameters of the athletes with the ecto-mesomorphic somatotype were slightly small to the size of the somatometric parameters of the mesomorphs, but they had the highest values of the anterior-posterior size of the chest. Female volleyball players with intermediate somatotype had larger values of the chest size than volleyball players with ectomorphic somatotype, although no significant difference was found when comparing them. It was found, that the most of the overall, transverse, and anterior-posterior dimensions of the chest in female volleyball players are statistically significantly higher than that of girls, who were not engaged in sports, and belonged to the same constitutional type as athletes. We have made a conclusion that belonging to one of the constitutional type does not provide similarity of morphometric parameters of the chest in persons with different levels of physical activity.