The Relationship Between Physical Performance Indicators, Metabolic Characteristics, and Body Composition of Young Athletes

Background: Adequate supply of nutrients, water, minerals, and micronutrients is required to maintain energy-yielding and constructive metabolism and support the body in the context of intense exercise load. This is especially important for young, physically and socially active individuals such as athletes, military personnel, rescuers, police officers, and other adventure and action professionals. AIM: To find relationships between Bioelectrical Impedance parameters of body composition of multi-event athletes and their key physical performance indicators determined by cardiopulmonary exercise testing with maximum exercise load. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Nine men (a multi-event team) aged 18 to 22 voluntarily participated in the study. We used anthropometry, Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis, skinfold caliper measurement, and cardiopulmonary exercise testing with VO2max measurement at peak exercise load. Due to small sample sizes, the Spearman nonparametric rank correlation method was used to analyze the relationship between the studied variables. Statistical analysis of the data was carried out using Microsoft Excel and Statistica 10.0 software. RESULTS: We found significant and strong correlations between the lean body mass, including muscle mass; water, protein and mineral content and the exercise efficiency and muscle energy supply during intense exercise load measured by cardiopulmonary exercise testing. CONCLUSION: It has been experimentally verified that during intense exercise load, most metabolic loading in the human body is borne by its lean body mass, including skeletal muscles, and their unimpaired functioning requires sufficient supply of both energy and proteins to maintain muscle volume and restore muscle mass. A reasonable way to increase the supply of proteins to the athlete’s body is to introduce functional foods with given ingredients and optimal content of high-quality and easily digestible protein into the diet.