Development and Tracking in Fitness Components: Leuven Longitudinal Study on Lifestyle, Fitness and Health

limb movement, explosive strength and static strength are neg­ atively related to APHV; thus, early maturers performed better than late maturers. However, between late adolescence and adulthood (30 years), the late maturers not only caught up to the early maturers, but there were significant differences for explosive strength and functional strength in favor of late ma­ turers. Finally, age-specific tracking, using inter-age correla­ tions, of adult health- and performance-related fitness scores were investigated. In addition, the independent contribution of adolescent physical characteristics to the explanation of adult fitness scores was also studied. Tracking between age 13 and age 30 years was moderately high (46% of variance explained) for flexibility, low to moderate (between 19% and 27% of var­ iance explained) for the other fitness parameters and low for pulse recovery and static strength (7% to 11% of variance ex­ plained). Between age 18 and age 30 years the tracking was high for flexibility, moderately high for explosive and static strength, and moderate for the other fitness parameters except for pulse recovery. The amount of variance of adult fitness lev­ els explained increased significantly when other characteristics observed during adolescence entered the regressions or discri­ minant functions.