TITLE:
Differences in body components and electrical characteristics between youth soccer players and non-athletes
AUTHORS:
Seung-Min Yang, Won-Deok Lee, Ju-Hyun Kim, Mee-Young Kim, Junghwan Kim
KEYWORDS:
Body Components; Electrical Characteristics; Youth Soccer Players
JOURNAL NAME:
Health,
Vol.5 No.6,
June
11,
2013
ABSTRACT: Many previous studies have focused on youth soccer player
injuries without body component analysis compared to non-athletes. Only a few
studies which have investigated body components of youth soccer players, and
studies that look at electrical characteristics used by rheobase and
chronaxie as well as body components are even scarcer. Therefore, we feel that
there is a need for a study investigating objective clinical analysis of the body components (body structure
and body composition) and electrical characteristics of both youth soccer
players and non-athletes. Sixty subjects participated in our study, comprising
of thirty youth soccer players and thirty non-athletes. The Inbody 520 was used
to measure and analyze body composition and the Duo 500 was employed to measure
electrical characteristics. It was observed that the soccer players showed
markedly lower total impedance compared to the non-athletes. In both legs, it
was particularly noted that there were significant differences between the
right and left sides. The soccer players showed a higher skeletal muscle mass
and lean/ideal lean × 100%
compared to the non-athletes. Furthermore, the soccer players had a lower rheobase
and higher chronaxie. A comparison of the genders showed a similar pattern. In
this study, we were able to separate the differences in body components and
electrical characteristics between the subject groups using a systemic approach.
Future studies on diverse types of athletes would contribute further to the development of clinical
physiotherapy and sports rehabilitation.