Athletes and their Sensei’s: did aging affect the lower limb kinematics in karate practitioners

• Autor(a) principal: Branco, Marco A. C.
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Brito, António Vences, Rodrigues-Ferreira, Mário André, Branco, Gonçalo A. C.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.15/1692
• topic: aging; karate; performance; combat sports; mae‐geri

Aging leads to a general decline in body functions that affects quality of life. Muscle function begins to slow the contraction from the 40 to 50 years and decreases muscle strength 1 to 1.5% per year after 60 years (Booth, Weeden, & Tseng, 1994; Vandervoort, 2002; Vandervoort & Mccomas, 1986). Older adults do less work for lower fast angular velocities (Power, et al., 2014), and less power for slow, moderate and fast angular velocities (Dalton, Power, Vandervoort, & Rice, 2012), than young adults. These losses increase as age increases. One factor that exacerbates these functional losses is the sedentary lifestyle, however, the physical exercise appears as an inversion factor, which cannot only reverse this decline but also promote an increase in functional capacity at the neuromuscular level. The athletic performance is seen as diminished in older adults, but in the case of martial arts, the karate Sensei’s are the technical execution model. This leads us to question if in karate young adults have better performance than older adults? Which in many cases are their Senseis’s. The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of the aging process in the kinematic and temporal structure of the frontal kick on veteran active karate practitioners.