Fiche du document
2014
- handle: 10670/1.ikggn5
- hal: hal-01778415
- doi: 10.1080/02640414.2014.889841
Ce document est lié à :
info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1080/02640414.2014.889841
info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
Mots-clés
Major League Baseball morphological changes performance National Football League National Hockey League National Basket AssociationSujets proches
CompetenceCiter ce document
Adrien Sedeaud et al., « Secular trend: morphology and performance », HALSHS : archive ouverte en Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, ID : 10.1080/02640414.2014.889841
Métriques
Partage / Export
Résumé
In a context of morphological expansion of the general population, how do athletes follow such a pattern of anthropometric growth? Is there any relation to performance? Biometric data including mass, height, body mass index (BMI) and age were collected for 50,376 American athletes representing 249,336 annual performers playing in professional baseball, football, ice hockey and basketball. Distributions by mass in National Football League (NFL) players are described by periods. Field goals have been studied in relation to players’ height in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Between 1871 and 2011, athletes from the four sports have increased significantly in mass, height and BMI, following a multi-exponential function series. Consequently, biometric differences between athletes and the general population are increasing gradually. Changes in the mass distribution within the NFL show the emergence of a biometrical specificity in relation to the field position. At the professional level, performance remains structured around precise biometric values. In the NBA, a height-attractor at 201.3 ± 6.3 cm for the best scorers is invariant, regardless of the level of play. These results suggest that laws of growth and biometrics drive high-level sport and organise performance around the specific constraint of each field position. Discrepancies between some mass and height developments question the (disproportionate) large mass increase (relative to the height increase) during the 1980s and 1990s.