The effect of bio-banding on the anthropometric, physical fitness and functional movement characteristics of academy soccer players
Calum MacMaster, Matt Portas, Guy Parkin, Sean P. Cumming, Chris Wilcox, Chris Towlson
Abstract
The study examined if maturity status bio-banding reduces within-group variance in anthropometric, physical fitness and functional movement characteristics of 319, under-14 and under-15 players from 19 UK professional soccer academies. Bio-banding reduced the within-bio-banded group variance for anthropometric values, when compared to an aggregated chronological banded group (chronological: 5.1-16.7%CV; bio-banded: 3.0-17.3%CV). Differences between these bio-banded groups ranged from moderate to very large (ES = 0.97 to 2.88). Physical performance variance (chronological: 4.8-24.9%CV; bio-banded: 3.8-26.5%CV) was also reduced with bio-banding compared to chronological aged grouping. However, not to the same extent as anthropometric values with only 68.3% of values reduced across banding methods compared to 92.6% for anthropometric data. Differences between the bio-banded groups physical qualities ranged from trivial to very large (ES = 0.00 to 3.00). The number of functional movement metrics and %CV reduced by bio-banding was lowest within the 'circa-PHV' groups (11.1-44.4%). The proportion of players achieving the threshold value score of ≥ 14 for the FMS™ was highest within the 'post-PHV' group (50.0-53.7%). The use of maturity status bio-banding can create more homogenous groups which may encourage greater competitive equity. However, findings here support a bio-banding maturity effect hypothesis, whereby maturity status bio-banding has a heightened effect on controlling for characteristics which have a stronger association to biological growth.