The Influence of Sport on Team Sport Athlete's Postural Development

Athletes' posture development is a very important and complex issue that many researchers have recently focused on for a better performance. The purpose of our study is to determine the influence of sport on athletes' postural characteristics compared to those of non-athletes. In order to identify the postural parameters among the participants of the study, we used the "Posture Screen Mobile" software. Participants in our study were students from Sports University of Tirana aged 20±2 years (N=60 Bachelor's students; 52% males and 48% females). Based on the aim of our study, they were divided into two groups athletes (N=30; 60% male; 40% female) and non-athletes (N=30; 47% male; 53% female). The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 20, focusing on a descriptive analysis and the Anova test. In our study, results show significant differences in postural curvatures between athletes and non-athletes (p-value < 0.05). Athletes reported higher scoliosis and lordosis curvatures, respectively forward lordosis with 3.2 ± 1.2 degrees and lateral curvature/scoliosis with 2.8 ± 1.2 degrees in their shoulders, compared to non-athletes (1.8 ± 0.9 and 2.1 ± 1.1 degrees). While between athletes, our results showed that basketball players (3.1 (±1.2) hip/lordosis; 2.8 (±1.2) head/kyphosis) exhibit higher sagittal plane curvatures for both lordosis and kyphosis compared to football players (2.8 (±1.1) hip/lordosis; 2.6 (±1.1) head/kyphosis) and volleyball players (2.7 (±1.0) hip/lordosis; 2.8 (±1.2) head/kyphosis). Based on our findings and conclusions, the study underlines that when the movement model does not correspond to the proper action during exercise, muscle imbalance and incorrect postural behavior occur. Training with tasks that correct muscle imbalance has a direct impact on the postural deficits that athletes exhibit as a result of asymmetric exercises. The coach's obligation continues to control the strength at unilateral levels and compare them so that the indicators are comparable.