Montenegrin Journal of Sports Science and Medicine

5 - 10

Authors: Michael Chia, Bokai Chen, Haresh Suppiah

Excessive sitting is detrimentally associated with major lifestyle diseases. Attempts at intervening the prolonged sitting time at work offer possibilities for a healthier lifestyle. The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of using a seat-cycle (S-C) compared to the office-chair (O-C) in reducing prolonged sitting in the office. Twenty-one (mean age = 48±12.4 years) office workers (10 men and 11 women; mean BMI = 24.1±4.6 kg/m͘͘²) volunteered to participate in an 11-week crossover design study. Participants were randomly assigned into two groups- each started with different conditions: the office-chair (O-C) or the seat-cycle (S-C) intervention for 4 weeks with a 2-week ‘washout’ period in-between before switching over. Self-reported sleep quality, lower back pain, daytime sleepiness and several anthropometric measurements were obtained under the two conditions. Participants spent on average 5.79±1.51 hrs sitting in the office, and used the seat-cycle for an average of 22.8 minutes daily at work. Significant improvements (p<0.05) were noted in a pre-to-post setting for resting systolic blood pressure (124.9±12.57 mmHg vs 120.5±13.56 mmHg); sleepiness ratings between 1300–1400 hrs (1.91±0.71 vs 1.56±0.57); lower back pain score (0.95±1.02 vs 0.57±0.68) and sleep quality (4.81±2.16 vs 3.38±2.04) after the S-C intervention. The use of the S-C provides desk-bound workers a potential way to interrupt prolonged sitting at work and further research is recommended to support such interventions at the workplace.

17 - 28

Authors: Joško Sindik, Anđelko Botica, Matej Fiškuš

Sport psychologist needs to understand how psychological factors affect athletic performance of an individual, considering individual differences among athletes. Each specific problem in working with athletes must be considered depending on complex factors: the type (specificity) of sport; characteristics of the activity (the training or competition); stages of athletes’ sports development; gender and age differences, etc. Although there are numerous psychological instruments, which assess psychological characteristics of athletes, it is important to select instruments adjusted to athletes, working style of sports psychologist, available time and other constraints. Here, we have formulated a preliminary version of our own battery of questionnaires, named Multi¬di¬men¬sional Inventory of Sport Excellence (MUSI), selecting the items for following psychological characteristics: energizing, main¬tain¬ing attention, directing attention, wide internal / external attention and narrow internal / external attention. In this phase of the stu¬dy, participants were stratified only by gender. Sample of 248 participants was examined, of which 103 male athletes (age 24.52 ± 11.80 years) and 145 female athletes (age 16.61 ± 6.69 years), from the Croatian sports clubs, competing in 16 different sports (archery, football, handball, bocce, bowling, cycling, karate, rowing, tennis, volleyball, basketball, synchronized swimming, tri¬a¬t¬h¬lon, table tennis, chess, badminton). Data were collected from March to June 2014 in Rijeka, during the trainings in sports clubs. Results of Principal Component Analysis and the reliabilities type internal consistency showed that each of sub-question¬na¬ires from battery MUSI have satisfactory reliability and construct validity, giving positive guidance for future adaptation of the que¬stion¬naire to specific subpopulations of athletes.

35 - 36

Authors: Sergej M. Ostojic

Nucleotides are group of natural biomonomeric molecules and novel dietary supplements with performance-enhancing attributes. However, their mechanisms of action and target biological structures are poorly understood and identified. This short paper overviews the possible role of mitochondria during the utilization of nucleotides for exercise performance. Mitochondria-related effects of nucleotides have been identified, along with obstacles for dietary nucleotides delivery to the organelle.

5-12

Authors: Dario Novak, Hrvoje Podnar, Arunas Emeljanovas, Risto Marttinen

The aim of this study was to determine and compare the level of individual anthropological characteristics of children in Croatia and Lithuania. The study examined height, weight, BMI and flexibility, explosive power and muscle endurance. The study included a total of 11,258 participants from two different countries. Of the total sample, 8,289 participants were from Croatia between ages 11 and 14 (mean age 12,5±1.5), of which 4,032 were male and 4,157 were female students. The other 2,969 participants were from Lithuania, also in the age range of 11-14 years (mean age 12,4±1.6), of which 1,504 participants were male and 1,456 females. During the 2009-10 school year, reserachers conducted measurements on students at different schools across Croatia. The same battery of tests was conducted in Lithuania during the same year. The results showed that the Croatian students have a higher body-mass, have higher BMI values and score better on tests of flexibility. Lithuanian students achieved better results in the repetitive strength test. Boys are taller, heavier and had higher BMI values as well as achieved better results in tests of explosive power and muscle endurance, while girls were more flexibile. Boys from Lithuania scored highest in all tests except in flexibility compared to boys in Croatia. Girls from Lithuania are thinner, have lower BMI and achieve better results in repetitive test of strength than girls in Croatia. Age was shown as a significant factor in the increase in all tested variables.

19-24

Authors: Lorenzo Laporta, Pantelis Nikolaidis, Luke Thomas, and José Afonso

Change is ubiquitous, but its degree and rate often affords detection of emerging patterns and establishing behavioral dynamics based on expected regularities. Match analysis capitalizes on such regularities, capturing information relevant for enhancing structure and reducing improvisation to a minimum. However, what if a game phase is only loosely regular, defying pattern systematization? Is it still possible to unfold principles of behavior capable of abstracting over-arching patterns? Our research focused on analysis of complex IV (KIV) or attack coverage in volleyball. Fourteen matches from the 2013 Volleyball Women’s World Grand Champions Cup were analyzed. Results showed the occurrence of KIV corresponded to fewer than 5% of the total number of actions, and plays where a team successfully conquered a point after attack coverage was circa 1%, meaning this game complex will only make a difference in balanced matches. Overall, twenty-nine attack coverage structures emerged, denoting very high organizational variability. Attack coverage therefore provides an example of principle-based and not structured-based game phase. Associative analysis showed that quick attack tempos constrain the emergence of more complex attack coverage structures. The search for principle-based instead of structure-based game phases may provide useful insights for comprehension of game dynamics and for informing training processes.

29-36

Authors: Stevo Popović, Duško Bjelica, Gabriela Doina Tanase, and Rajko Milašinović

Anthropologists recognized the tallness of nations in the Dinaric Alps long time ago. As the modern Bosnian and Herzegovinian fall more into the Dinaric racial classification, the purpose of this study was to examine the body height in Bosnian and Herzegovinian adults as well as the relationship between arm span as an alternative to estimating the body height and body height, which vary in different ethnic and racial groups. The nature and scope of this study analyzes 212 students (178 men, aged 22.42±2.79 and 34 women, aged 21.56±2.06) from the University of Banjaluka to be subjects. The anthropometric measurements were taken according to the protocol of the ISAK. Means and standard deviations were obtained. A comparison of means of body heights and arm spans within each gender group and between genders were carried out using a t-test. The relationships between body height and arm span were determined using simple correlation coefficients and their 95% confidence interval. Then a linear regression analysis was performed to examine the extent to which the arm span can reliably predict body height. The results have shown that male Bosnian and Herzegovinians are 183.87±7.11 cm tall and have an arm span of 184.50±8.28 cm, while female Bosnian and Herzegovinians are 171.82±6.56 cm tall and have an arm span of 169.85±8.01 cm. Compared to other studies, the results of this one have shown that both genders make Bosnian and Herzegovinian population one of the tallest nations on the earth, maybe the tallest one. Moreover, the arm span reliably predicts body height in both genders. However, the estimation equations, which were obtained in Bosnian and Herzegovinians, are substantially different alike in other populations, since arm span was close to body heights: in men 0.73±1.17 cm more than the body height and in women 1.97±1.45 centimeters less than the body height. This confirms the necessity for developing separate height models for each population.