ANTHROPOMETRIC AND PHYSIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON INDIAN INTERUNIVERSITY BASKETBALL PLAYERS

The purpose of this study was two-fold, firstly, to evaluate the anthropometric profile of Indian interuniversity basketball players and, secondly, to search the correlation of body mass index, % body fat, hand grip strength (right dominant) and Vo2max,with other anthropometric characteristics studied. Eleven anthropometriccharacteristics, four body composition parameters, two physical and two physiological variables were measured on randomly selected 60 inter-university Indian basketball players (35 males and 25 females) aged 18–25 years from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab, India with adequate controls (n = 102, 52 males and 50 females). The results indicated that male basketball players were taller (6.63%) and heavier (7.31%) and female basketball players were slightly taller (0.31%) and lighter (3.74%) than their control counterparts. One way analysis of variance showed significant (p ≤ .004 - .000) between group differences in all the variables (excepthip circumference) between basketball players and controls. In basketball players, significantly positive correlations were found with BMI and other 12 variables, with percent body fat and 7 variables, with right hand grip strength and 12 variables and with Vo2max and other 9 variables, and significantly negative correlationswere found with BMI and other 1 variable (% lean body mass), with percent body fat and other 6 variables, with right hand grip strength and other 2 variables and with Vo2max with other 3 variables. The findings of the present study might be useful in future investigation on player selection, talent identification in the game of basketball and its training program development.