A comparative study on the cardiac morphology and vertical jump height of adolescent black South African male and female amateur competitive footballers

Summary Objective The aim of this comparative study was to determine the gender differences in cardiac morphology and performance in adolescent black South African footballers. Methods Anthropometry, electrocardiography and echocardiography data were measured in 167 (85 males and 82 females) adolescent black South African footballers (mean age: 14.8 ± 1.3 years). Vertical jump height was used as a performance measure of explosive lower –limb power. Results The males had less body fat compared with the females (12.1 ± 3.6 vs 16.8 ± 4.1%, p < 0.05), while females had higher left ventricular end –diastolic diameters compared with males (48.7 ± 3.7 vs 40.7 ± 8.1, p < 0.05). Vertical jump height was higher in males (37.2 ± 10.3) compared with females (31.2 ± 8) and was inversely associated with body fat (â = –0.2, p < 0.05) and positively associated with lean mass (â = 0.5, p < 0.05). Conclusion The findings showed that adolescent black South African male footballers had a performance advantage over females for explosive lower –limb power, which was explained by differences in body composition and not cardiac morphology.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Cardiovascular Journal of Africa

• Publication date

  2018-01-23

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.5830/CVJA-2017-032PMID 28817153PMCID 6002788
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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