Why age categories in youth sport should be eliminated: Insights from performance development of youth female long jumpers.

Long-term sports participation and performance development are major issues in popular sports and talent development programs. This study aimed to provide longitudinal trends in youth female long jump performance development, participation, and relative age effects (RAEs), as longitudinal data for female athletes are missing. 51'894 season's best results of female long jump athletes ( = 16'189) were acquired from the Swiss Athletics online database and analyzed within a range of 6-22 years of age.

Positive Effects of Augmented Feedback to Reduce Time on Ground in Well-Trained Runners.

Context: Successful elite sprint to long-distance runners are known to have shorter ground-contact time (GCT) than their less successful counterparts.

Purpose: To investigate whether augmented feedback (aF) about GCT can reduce the time on ground (TOG) per minute in long-distance runners and, if so, whether this reduction improves running performance.

Methods: Thirty well-trained runners were allocated to 3 groups.