Postural control in adolescent boys and girls before the age of peak height velocity: Effects of task difficulty

Adolescent children experience a critical developmental period marked by rapid biological changes. Research question To describe the longitudinal changes in postural control that occur in adolescent boys and girls before the age of peak height velocity (PHV).

Here, to address the gap of knowledge, we compared the postural control and activation strategies of the muscles that control the ankle joint in twenty-three boys (age 12.5 ± 0.29) and twenty-one girls (age 10.5 ± 0.32). They performed easy (two legs) and difficult (two legs-eyes closed; one leg) postural balance tasks at 18 and 9 months before PHV and at PHV. We quantified the center of pressure (COP) displacements in the anterior-posterior (AP) and mediolateral (ML) directions and electromyographic (EMG) activity of tibialis anterior (TA) and medial gastrocnemius (MG) muscles.

Boys exhibited greater AP and ML COP displacement than girls only for the one leg task (difficult task). Although boys and girls had similar postural control 18 months prior to PHV, girls exhibited lesser COP displacement at 9 months before PHV, which related to greater TA-MG coactivation (R² = 0.26; p < 0.01). In contrast, postural control was not different between boys and girls with an easy balance task (two legs) performed with eyes open and closed. Rather, we found that all children improved their COP displacement in the ML direction with maturity and both AP and ML COP was significantly lower with eyes open.

These findings provide novel evidence that postural control is superior in early adolescent girls than boys 9 months prior to PHV, likely associated with an earlier maturation of muscle coordination.