Secular growth trend characteristics of the body structure in Hungarian athlete boys

The aim of the present study was to get more knowledge of the nature of athlete boy's secular body changes and to differentiate it from the individual acceleration. A positive secular trend was supposed in athlete youth similar to normal population, but with different extent because of the sport selection. In this study some specific trend characteristics of athlete (basketball player) boys between the 1990^th and 2010^th are analyzed and compared to that of the reference values of the Hungarian National Growth Study I and II (HNGS I - 1980's, Eiben et al. 1991; HNGS II - 2003-2006, Bodzsár & Zsákai 2007). The individual data were collected in Budapest (capital) basketball club boys aged 10-15 years (N = 1376). Body measurements were taken by the first author by the request of coaches and parents. Secular trend was characterized by the changes in some of the measured body parameters by three birth cohorts. The secular changes followed a positive trend, though the traditional decade analyses the variables did not follow a balanced, proportional manner of change. The largest difference in body height occurred in 12-years of age, with a total of +8.27 cm height difference between Cohort III and I and +9.31 kg total difference in body mass at the same age, respectively. Some differences in the tendentious changes occurred between the age groups, characteristic shift of the fat content and the trunk/extremity fat ratio increase toward the younger age, and more excessive increase in BMI were found. Though it could be expected to have favourable body composition in young athletes, nowadays some unfavourable changes in the secular growth trend of body structure have been occurred. One explanation could be the less active leisure time spent. Our results can provide more practical information for coaches to enrich their professional attitude towards a better understanding how to choose and modify training methods during the varied growth and developmental process of young athletes.