PECULIARITIES OF SOMATOMETRIC INDICES OF YOUNG BASKETBALL PLAYERS WITH DIFFERENT TYPES OF POSTURE

Abstract

The aim is to define the peculiarities of somatometric indices of young basketball players with different types of posture. Experimental studies were conducted at the Department of Theory and Methods of Physical Education of Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University from September 2022 to August 2023. 66 basketball players aged 9–10 years from the children’s and youth sports school in Ivano-Frankivsk were involved in the experiment, after obtaining their parents’ consent to analyze data from medical records. The research was conducted in compliance with the requirements of the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki “Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects”. Research methods: theoretical methods – for studying and substantiating the fundamental provisions of the research, outlining its problematic field; empirical methods – pedagogical observation as a method of the empirical level of research for familiarization with the process of educational and training classes organization; pedagogical experiment; statistical methods. Results. The present study was designed to determine the type of posture of young basketball players in the age range of 9–10 years. The analysis of data from basketball players’ medical records revealed the presence of posture disorders in some of them. It was established that among 9-year-old children 18.18% (n = 12) had normal posture, stoop back, and scoliotic posture, whereas among basketball players aged 10 years old, 15.15% (n = 10) had normal posture, stoop back, or scoliotic posture. Conclusions. Most children aged 9 and 10 are taller than average for their age and generally of normal weight. As for the young athletes’ chest circumference it generally corresponds to the general norms. However, there are individual variations, especially among 9-year-olds, who require increased attention and correction to reach the normative values. The type of posture is not a determining factor for the physical development of basketball players, since children with any type of posture have similar somatometric characteristics, and small variations are rather due to individual peculiarities of physical development. Significant differences were found between children aged 9 and 10 years, indicating higher height, weight, and chest circumference of athletes of the older group. The results of measuring somatometric indices obtained in these groups were analyzed in the following ways: a) assessment of the expression level of each index by comparing with the data on norms according to age; b) comparison of data in groups of young basketball players with different types of posture within a certain age category; c) determination of differences between athletes of different ages with the same type of posture.