DOES SPORTS TRAINING DURING CHILDHOOD COMPROMISE ADULT STATURE?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Previous reports have highlighted potential harmful effects of intensive physical training on the growing female athlete. The primary concern being that training may retard pubertal development and growth. We have recently obtained adult stature measures for a cohort of young athletes who were annually assessed during their growing years. PURPOSE: To compare the development of stature in athletes and non-athletes followed from childhood through to adulthood and to investigate the confounding effect of pubertal development. METHODS: Children were drawn from the Training of Young Athletes (TOYA) Study, a UK longitudinal study that ran from 1987 through to 1992. The initial cohort consisted of 81 gymnasts, 60 swimmers and 81 tennis players (entry age range 8 to 16 years). Anthropometric values were measured annually. Adult stature was obtained from a postal questionnaire, which was completed in the fall of 2000. Adult stature was obtained for 38 gymnasts, 35 swimmers and 39 tennis players and this data is presented here. 56 non-athlete girls from the Chard Growth Study (UK) (1982 to 1987; age at entry 9 years) were used as a reference sample. Height values were converted to a standardized Z score scale (Child Growth Foundation (UK) Growth Charts). Pubertal development was assessed using stages of breast development. Data were analysed cross-sectionally by chronological age and longitudinally using a multilevel regression modeling approach. RESULTS: At 13 years of age gymnasts height Z scores (−0.6 SD 1.1) were significantly lower than swimmers (0.4 SD 1.1), tennis players (0.6 SD 1.1) and non-athletes (0.1 SD 0.9) (p > 0.05). All adult Z scores were positive: gymnasts (0.2 SD 1.0), swimmers (0.5 SD 1.1) and tennis players (0.7 SD 1.3) but were not significantly different (p < 0.05). In the multilevel model, when the confounders of age and sports group were controlled, breast stage was found to be a significant independent predictor of height (2.1 cm SEE 0.01 cm) (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: These results suggest that pubertal development occurs later in gymnasts than the other groups but that final adult stature is not compromised.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".