TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hammami, Raouf
A1  - Chaouachi, Anis
A1  - Makhlouf, Issam
A1  - Granacher, Urs
A1  - Behm, David George
T1  - Associations Between Balance and Muscle Strength, Power Performance in Male Youth Athletes of Different Maturity Status
T2  - Pediatric exercise science
N2  - Balance, strength and power relationships may contain important information at various maturational stages to determine training priorities. Purpose: The objective was to examine maturity-specific relationships of static/dynamic balance with strength and power measures in young male athletes. Method: Soccer players (N = 130) aged 10-16 were assessed with the Stork and Y balance (YBT) tests. Strength/power measures included back extensor muscle strength, standing long jump (SLJ), countermovement jump (CMJ), and 3-hop jump tests. Associations between balance with strength/power variables were calculated according to peak-height-velocity (PHV). Results: There were significant medium-large sized correlations between all balance measures with back extensor strength (r =.486.791) and large associations with power (r =.511.827). These correlation coefficients were significantly different between pre-PHV and circa PHV as well as pre-PHV and post-PHV with larger associations in the more mature groups. Irrespective of maturity-status, SLJ was the best strength/ power predictor with the highest proportion of variance (12-47%) for balance (i.e., Stork eyes opened) and the YBT was the best balance predictor with the highest proportion of variance (43-78%) for all strength/ power variables. Conclusion: The associations between balance and muscle strength/power measures in youth athletes that increase with maturity may imply transfer effects from balance to strength/power training and vice versa in youth athletes.
KW  - children
KW  - adolescents
KW  - training
KW  - peak height velocity
KW  - relationships
Y1  - 2016
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/44788
SN  - 0899-8493
SN  - 1543-2920
VL  - 28
SP  - 521
EP  - 534
PB  - Human Kinetics Publ.
CY  - Champaign
ER  -