Functional assessment of 8-12 years-old children practicing judo

Background. Suitable functional assessment is an element of injury prevention in sport. The main aim of the study was to assess the functional status of judo athletes at the initial stage of sports training.Material and methods. The study involved 40 male and female judo practitioners aged 8–12 years, training in four sports clubs in Warsaw. The main research methods was Functional Movement Screen (FMS) consists 7 tasks: deep squat, hurdle step, in-line lunge, shoulder mobility, active straight leg raise, push-up and rotational stability.Results. Girls had a significantly higher overall FMS score (p=0.013) than boys. Analyzing the results of the bilateral tests, the greatest difference between the right and left side results in girls was observed in the active leg raise test (p=0.042). There was a significant positive correlation between the overall FMS score and the age of the children studied (r=0.334, p<0.05).Conclusions. The girls achieved higher results than the boys. This may be due to the faster rate of physical development in the female sex. The majority of subjects with a history of more than one injury scored 14 or less on the FMS test when cumulated.