engleski

Morphological differences between dominant and non- dominant body side in Croatian tennis players

During the past decade the physical stress in competitive tennis has been constantly increasing. The aim of this research was to establish how busy tournament schedules and hard training programs affect morphological differences between dominant and non dominant body sides of tennis players. The study included eighteen elite Croatian tennis players (18 to 28 years of age), ranked among 30 best national players. They where measured by 12 anthropometric variables. The data were processed by the SPSS package for Windows, ver. 11.5. The central and dispersive parameters were computed (mean, SD, MIN, MAX). To determine the differences between variables of dominant and non dominant side t-test was used. The results showed that the long term tennis training and competition have infl uence on some morphological differences between dominant and non dominant side of tennis players. Signifi cant differences appears in upper body segments (upper arm extended girth, upper arm fl exed girth, forearm girth, hand width, wrist diameter) while it seems that tennis training and competition do not produce signifi cant differences in lower body segments. It can be concluded that differences in upper body segments highlight the importance of upper-body compensatory exercises in order to prevent injuries, extend competitive carrier and increase the quality of training program.

tennis ; asymethry ; morphology

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