Original researchBiological maturity influences running performance in junior Australian football
Introduction
Sports governing bodies generally apply age groupings for youth athletes in an attempt to provide equitable competition and development for athletes of similar chronological age.1, 2, 3 Children and adolescents, however, do not mature at the same rate4 while sporting age groups typically span one or two years resulting in athletes in a single competition with up to two years difference in chronological age.3 It is also known that biological age can vary as much as three years in individuals of the same chronological age.5 As children mature, increased height and weight have an impact on aerobic and anaerobic capacities, muscular strength, power and running speed, leading to an improved sporting performance throughout pubertal growth.5 This gives a distinct advantage in sporting performance to older individuals or those more biologically mature within an age group.6
The relative age effect (RAE) refers to the predominance of selected players born in the first quarter or half of the year in annual age-grouped cohorts that have been shown to result in short-term and long-term differences in sport outcomes as a result of birth date.1, 2 Explanations for the RAE typically include a combination of chronological age and physical characteristic differences due to greater maturity. Older individuals in the same age group have a physical and performance advantage, with this advantage being greater for early maturing compared to late maturing players.2, 7
Outcomes linked to the RAE usually focus on selection into elite training programmes and representation in teams and squads at both junior and senior levels,2, 3 however some researchers have also assessed comparative differences in measures of physical fitness8 and skill.9 Malina10 further considered the association between relative skeletal age and injury risk in elite schoolboy soccer players concluding that maturity status and time spent in match play and training were significant predictors of injuries.
The RAE is well documented in the football codes2 although the phenomenon is not always associated with significant advantages in physical components.11 Furthermore, little is known about the influence of age and maturation on match running performance in football, although Buchheit et al., have explored this issue in soccer.12 Time-motion analysis data are not available in the literature across the development pathway for junior Australian football (AF), a sport characterised by similar running demands to soccer at the elite level13, 14 along with the addition of considerable physical contact.15 More specifically the influence of age and biological maturation on running performance has not been described in this cohort. The purpose of this study therefore was to investigate the influence of biological maturity on measures of running fitness and running performance in both training and competition in junior AF.
Section snippets
Methods
Fifty-two healthy male junior AF players from five age group competitions ranging from under eleven (U11) to under nineteen (U19) were recruited for this study from a local junior AF club in Melbourne, Australia (U11, n = 10; U13, n = 16; U15, n = 14; U17, n = 8; U19, n = 5). Teams representing the club were fielded in two year age gaps in this local domestic competition. The study was conducted over an eight week period (June–July) during the second half of the AF season. Measures of physical stature,
Results
Each age group, with the exception of the U19 who were all at pubertal stage 5 (P5), included participants from a range of pubertal stages (U11: P1–2; U13: P2–4; U15: P2–5; U17: P4–5). As expected, significant differences were evident between the less mature (P1, P2) and the more mature (P4, P5) groups for weight, sitting and standing height, aerobic fitness and 20 m sprint (Table 1). A large positive correlation was found between biological maturity (Y-PHV) and 20 m shuttle run score (r = 0.647, p <
Discussion
This study is the first to investigate the influence of biological maturity on AF running performance and to describe the time-motion running demands in junior AF during both training and competition. Running performance demonstrated moderate to very large relationships (range: 0.417–0.831) with biological maturity, expressed as an estimate of Y-PHV, in this group of players ranging in age from 10.4 to 19.7 y. Similar findings were observed when players were categorised into groups based on
Conclusion
This study presents data in AF supporting the notion that functional running fitness and running performance in both training and competition environments improve with increasing biological and chronological age. The observation that within the same chronological age group there exists a range of individuals varying in biological maturity suggests that more mature players are at a performance advantage, and conversely that late maturing players are at a disadvantage. Such sporting inequality,
Practical implications
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Participants within a chronological age group in junior AF vary in their physical and biological maturity status. All stakeholders within junior AF should recognise that more mature players in an age group, either chronologically, biologically or a combination of both, are at a performance advantage to those less mature.
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Individual goals, within the biological capacity of players, should be used as benchmarks of performance.
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Coaches, administrators and policy makers should look for ways to
Acknowledgement
No external financial support was received for this study.
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