Body physique and dominant somatotype in elite and low-profile athletes with different specializations.

Background And Objective: Somatotyping is helpful in sports in which the body shape could influence the resulting performance. The purpose of this study was to determine the somatotype of high profile Lithuanian athletes in kayaking, basketball and football and to compare between disciplines and with low level sportsmen of the same age.

Materials And Methods: A total of 72 young male sportsmen aged from 18 to 24 years were divided into three groups (kayakers, basketball and football players).

Inferred influence of human lateral profile on limb load asymmetry during a quiet standing balance test.

Although the identification and characterisation of a participant's lateral profile during quiet standing have not received much research attention, they have the potential to greatly extend our understanding of upright stance stability control. This study further examines limb load asymmetries during quiet bipedal stance. During voluntary frontal-plane weight shifting for 2 min, 300 centre-of-pressure displacements on 14 blindfolded right-handed young adults were recorded.

Power of performance of the thumb adductor muscles: effect of laterality and gender.

The aim of this work was to originally measure mechanical power output of the thumb adductor muscles during fast adduction of the thumb in the horizontal plane. This information will contribute to biomechanical guidelines to help clinicians, sport medicine and rehabilitation specialists in the objective functional evaluation of abnormalities of thumb adductors. Participants performed 20 fast adductions in response to audio signals.

The effect of effleurage massage in recovery from fatigue in the adductor muscles of the thumb.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of local effleurage massage on the recovery from fatigue in the small hand muscles.

Methods: This study was a within-subject repeated measure design. Twelve healthy, right-handed volunteer male subjects with a mean age of 25 +/- 2.