The Effect of Relative Age on Some Performance Characteristics in Young Volleyball Players

Abstract

It has been evaluated in the literature that different maturation levels exist in the same chronological age and this may be an advantage for athletic performance. The aim of this study was to examine the performance characteristics of young male and female volleyball players in the same chronological age according to their relative age.

A total of 536 athletes who were 14 years old and similar training age, 238 male and 298 female subjects participated in this study. Relative age was determined by quitting the quartile of the year starting from January. Explosive strength (counter movement and squat jumps), anaerobic strength and capacity (Wingate test), aerobic capacity (20m shuttle run) and speed (5m and 10m sprint) were measured. 2x4 ANOVA was used to determine the differences between gender and relative age groups, and Bonferroni test was used to determine the differences between the quarters of the year. The significance level of all statistical procedures was accepted as 0.05.

The distribution of volleyball players in the quarters was 47.9%, 27.7%, 17.6%, 6.7% for males, 39.9%, 29.5%, 17.4% and 13.1% for females respectively. The differences between the genders in all variables were statistically significant (p<0.05). Relative age effect (RAE) was not significant in all variables examined as performance parameters (p>0.05).

As a result of this study it was found that both female and male volleyball players were mostly born in the first quarter of the year. On the other hand, relative age was not a distinctive effect on performance variables of young volleyball players in the same chronological age.