The influence of different sports specialization on morphological characteristics at young age

In addition to sports whose specificity traditionally lies in early engagement, the growing popularity of sports has also encouraged early involvement in sports activities. Therefore, the process of specialization begins earlier, partly spontaneously in the desire to improve the quality of training, but also for the sake of faster success. Early sports specialization can have a significant impact on both motor and morphological characteristics. The subject of this paper is the morphological characteristics of young athletes. The aim of this research is to perform a comparative analysis of young athletes of different ages, from the aspect of morphological characteristics, and in the function of defining the impact of early sports specialization on body structure. The study included 105 respondents aged 8 to 11, of which 56 boys and 49 girls, who practice martial arts (Judo, Wrestling) or swimming. The testing procedure includes measuring body height and analyzing body composition (InBody 270). The applied analyses can be observed significant differences between the examined age groups for most of the examined variables within the defined sports. The established differences define the cumulative effects of growth and development, as well as the general effects of physical activity, but also the specific effects of a given sport. However, the main focus of this work was on defining the differences in early specialization of different sports, with significant differences only in the group of the youngest children, namely in body height, total body water, protein, skeletal muscle mass, and the fat free mass, at the level of p = 0.002-0.005. While in the age group of 9 to 11 years in boys, as well as in all age groups in girls, no statistically significant differences were found between sports at the level of the examined morphological characteristics. Based on the obtained results, it can be concluded that body height was one of the factors in the selection of the youngest respondents, and that early sports specialization does not have significant effects on morphological characteristics at the age of 8 to 11 years, but we can assume that it has a much greater effect on motor skills, which should definitely be key in selection.