Journal of Men’s Health (JOMH) is published by IMR Press from Volume 17 Issue 1 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Dougmar Publishing Group.
COMPARISON OF UPPER AND LOWER BODY’S ANAEROBIC POWER IN VISUALLY IMPAIRED JUDO AND GOALBALL ATHLETES
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Background and objective
While there are many studies done on goalball and judo athletes, our study focuses on comparing and identifying the upper and lower body’s anaerobic power in world-class visually impaired goalball and judo athletes.
Material and methods
The subjects of this study were visually impaired male athletes who had earned a medal in judo (n = 4) and goalball (n = 5). Anaerobic power of the upper and lower body was measured with the Wingate test. We measured the peak power, peak power/body weight, mean power, mean power/body weight, rate of fatigue, and blood lactate concentration.
Results
Goalball athletes showed a significantly lower all-out lactate concentration than judo athletes (2.80 ± 0.33/9.18 ± 1.18, P < 0.05). Goalball athletes showed a significantly lower rate of fatigue than judo athletes in the upper body (58.1 ±1.61, P < 0.05), while judo athletes showed a significantly lower rate of fatigue than goalball athletes in the lower body (60.5 ± 1.04, P < 0.05). Goalball athletes showed a significantly higher upper and lower body ratio in the mean power than judo athletes (0.76 ± 0.01/0.67 ± 0.04, P < 0.05). In the upper and lower body ratio on the rate of fatigue, judo athletes showed high fatigue in the upper body, while goalball athletes showed low fatigue (1.24 ± 0.09, P < 0.05).
Conclusions
Visually impaired goalball athletes have higher anaerobic power in the upper body than the lower body whereas visually impaired judo athletes have higher anaerobic power in the lower body than the upper body.