Importance of the Anthropological and Genetic Criteria Involved in Sporting Selection

Abstract

The researches made in the field of performance sports showed that performance is due 70% to selection and only 30% to training. So, getting top results is possible only for sportsmen with exceptional genetic equipment and special abilities. This work approaches two relevant criteria of the sporting selection, the anthropological and the genetic criteria. These criteria are the only ones to allow us to scientifically foresee the evolution of the biotype and if it shall become an optimum anthropological type for the sporting branch in which it has been selected. At the same time, guiding the training based on knowing the individual anthropological particularities of each sportsman leads to increased sporting efficiency. The selection implies a broad conceptual and organizational assessment action on different levels (anamnesis, diagnosis of the health state, level of physical and functional growth and development, psychic availability etc.) of large groups of children and juniors. It is a process organized and repeated to discover early the subject’s inborn availability so that he/she may practice and specialize in a sport discipline or event afterwards. The genetic and anthropological selection criteria broadly result from the medical and sporting anamnesis, containing both personal, and hereditary-collateral antecedents (child and parents’ morphological configuration, cultural, educational level, parents and child’s attitude towards sports, family sporting antecedents, psychomotor behavior, IQ etc.). The assessment of the potential in sports is made by anthropometric exam, which is a physical growth and development measurement method based on measuring the body, the somatic indexes (nutrition indexes, harmony indexes, force index) concerning various segments or even the whole body.