Somatometric characteristics and functional capabilities of handball players and folk dance dancers

Handball is a sport of strength, speed, and technical and tactical achievements. It is very popular with the young due to the success of our handball players on World and European championships as well as on the Olympic games. It demands more hours of training in order to master all the elements of the technique, the tactics and the variants of attacking and defense. This is of great importance for handball because it belongs to the group of collective sports. Collective practicing of folk dances also demands regular trainings that last for many hours in order to master all of the elements of certain folk dances and the choreography as well as to coordinate all the members of the folklore assembly. The goal of this research is to establish the differences that exist in somathometric characteristics and functional capabilities between the handball players and the folk dancers. The research has been performed on the sample existing of 20 handball players of the Handball Club "Železnicar" from Nis and of 23 dancers of the Academic folklore assembly "Oro" of the Students' Cultural Center of Ni§. This research shows that the average height of the handball players of 191,17+5,66 cm is, statistically, bigger than the average height of the dancers of the folklore assembly "Oro" (178,62±5,92 cm). The body weight of the handball players of 95,62±9,69 kg is, statistically, bigger than the body weight of the dancers (73,32+9,72 kg). Differences exist in other somathometric variables as well. It can be assumed that such results are consequences of directed selection and the demands of handball as a sport. The same stands for the dancers of folk dances. No differences have been established in functional capabilities, both in the pulse frequency at rest and the relative maximal Oxygen use. A significant difference exists in the absolute maximal Oxygen use which for the handball players amounts to 4,69±0,68 L/min, and for the dancers of folk dances to 3,35±0,82 L/min. This can be explained by the fact that handball belongs to the group of un-aerobic aerobic sports while folk dance, due to its nature, can be considered as aerobic un-aerobic physical activity.