The Impact of Growth and Maturation on Physical Performance

Childhood and adolescence represent unique periods of life whereby rapid growth and the processes of maturation lead to changes in body size and shape, as well as changes to tissue structure and function. This includes developmental changes in body composition, muscle mass, cardiorespiratory function and energy metabolism, all of which influence the physical performance of youth athletes. Consequently, youth should be considered a unique population, and practitioners should understand how growth and maturation interact with training. Accordingly, this chapter explains the most common methods to measure maturation, including readily accessible methods to estimate the somatic maturity of youth athletes. This chapter also briefly considers the use of maturation to compare athletes within age group categories and the use of maturity for biobanding, which is the grouping of athletes of similar maturation for training or competition.