engleski

Morphological differences between kickboxing and olympic combat sports

Introduction: The main purpose of this study is to investigate morphological differences between highly trained kickboxers and Olympic combat sports except fencing. Study consisted of two parts, general comparison and comparison by universal weight categories. Many review and original papers have investigated physiological profiles of combat sport athletes, and anthropological parameter within sports as well as younger athletes (Lulzim, 2011 ; Vecchio, Matsushigue and Franchini, 2011 ; James et al., 2016). Methods: 135 healthy male, national and international competitors voluntarily participated in this study. All participants were introduced with the procedures and signed written consent to be a part of the study. Sports that were included in this study were boxing (N=16), wrestling (N=23), judo (N=23), karate (N=20), taekwondo (N=30) and kickboxing (N=23). Procedure of measurement was defi ned by International biological programme (IBP). One way ANOVA, and Bonferroni posthoc method were used for determining statistical significance. Results: General analysis of longitudinal and transversal dimensions showed that Olympic sports have similar values than kickboxers. Only difference was between kickboxers and wrestlers. There were no significant differences between sports considering body volume and body composition. Similar findings were found when put in universal weight categories (-70kg, -80kg, -90kg, 90kg+). What was interesting to notice is that kickboxers have lower increase in longitudinal and transversal dimensions when compared through universal weight categories. This can be explained by their greater weigh cuts before fights. Conclusion: These findings can suggest that morphological characteristics cannot be used as discriminative factor between Olympic and non-Olympic combat sports. Kickboxing fighters appear to be less affected by weight categories in terms of longitudinal and transversal characteristics.

combat sports, morphology

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