Normative reference of standing long jump indicates gender difference in lower muscular strength of pubertal growth

Abstract

Background: Although the standing long jump (SLJ) is a popular physical fitness assessment, it lacks an updated criterion-reference standard. This study generated the first normative SLJ test data for Chinese aged 8 -18. Methods: From September 2005 to December 2011, comprehensive physical fitness assessments were conducted on 12,712 school students. The SLJ performances were significantly different between boys and girls (all age groups, p < 0.01). Results: The boys performed better than the girls in each age group. The mean difference increased as the age increased, depicting a prominent variance in muscular strength between boys and girls at age 12, and the variances became larger at age 18. Girls in the 70th percenttile performed similarly to boys performing in the 10th percentile. The onset of muscle strength for boys found in this study corresponded to the onset age of testosterone maturation of Chinese boys investigated in previous studies. Linear regression found age and BMI predicting SLJ significantly for boys and girls, explaining better SLJ results in older boy and the effect of their heavy body size. Conclusions: This study indicated a muscular strength difference between genders during growth and added supporting evidence to the hormonal influence of muscle growth during puberty.

Relationship between Organized Physical Activity and Motor Competence in Teenagers

“…I was verified the differences among boys and girls MC and the relationship between MC and OPA of the adolescents, considering the gender. Our study found there was a significant difference between the MC of the teenagers, and this was already expect, once the literature reports evidences with similar results [19,20], although there is no consensus about which gender presents the better MC. In our results, boys had a superior performance when compare with girls, and this is similar with found by some studies [20,21] but the opposite found by Gidley Larson et al, when analyzing children [19].…”

First normative reference of standing long jump indicates gender difference in lower muscular strength of Macedonian school children

“…Results from previous researches [21,[36][37][38]] also indicate that boys have better muscular fitness in these age categories. Similar results have also been obtained in the comparative studies [39], in which boys achieve better results in the tests for assessment of the level of physical fitness in which the energetic component is predominant.…”

“…The legitimacies in the development of the level of the muscle strength assessed through the standing long jump test are in accordance with the laws of growth and development [36][37][38][40][41][42]. The level of the muscle strength in the course of the analyzed years has constantly been following the growth curve.…”

“…clude that school children of both sexes from Macedonia in average achieve lower results in the standing long jump test at the age of 8 to 11, and better results at the age of 12 to 18 years compared to scholars from Hong Kong [36]. School children of both sexes at the age of 13 to 17 years achieve similar results in the standing long jump test in terms of the previous researches realized on adolescents from Spain covered by the AVENA study ("Alimentación y Valoración del Estado Nutricional de los Adolescentes") [37].…”

“…Boys and girls in younger ages could possibly perform similarly if they were in similar BMI. But the performance difference could increase drastically studied in higher forms and this difference becomes broadened to overweight and obese boys and girls [36].…”