ABSTRACT:Introduction: Quality of life is enhanced by improving and maintaining a good range of motion in the joints. In the field of games and sports, top level performance depends upon the flexibility of various joints. Considering the role of flexibility measures on human activities the investigators intended to measure the flexibility of different joints of state level gymnasts, footballers and yogic practitioners.
Purpose: Thus the purpose of the present study was to compare the flexibility measures among state level gymnasts, footballers and yogic practitioners.
Methodology: Total sixty (N=60) male state level performers i.e. twenty (n1=20) gymnasts (Gr. G); twenty (n2=20) footballers (Gr. F) and twenty (n1=20) yogic practitioners (Gr. Y) were randomly selected as subjects for the present study. The age of the subjects were ranged from 17 to 19 years. Flexibility measured in different joints was taken from the subjects in three times in consecutive three days and average of the score was taken as flexibility score.
Statistics: In the present study for the sake of analysis of data; mean and standard deviation of different flexibility measures of various joints were calculated and one way ANOVA was used to compare the mean. To find out the superiority of the groups critical ratio was also employed. The level of significance was set at p<0.05 level of confidence. For statistical calculations Excel Spread Sheet of windows version 7 was used.
Results: The result of the present study showed that the significant difference was observed among Gr. G, Gr. F and Gr. Y in wrist flexion, wrist extension, shoulder flexion, spine flexion, trunk flexion, knee flexion, ankle dorsi flexion at 0.05 level of confidence. Critical difference was also showed that Gr. Y was superior to Gr. G and Gr. F in comparing the wrist extension, shoulder flexion, spine flexion, trunk flexion, knee flexion and ankle dorsi flexion of state level performers and Gr. G was superior to Gr. F in comparing the wrist flexion, wrist extension, spine flexion, trunk flexion, knee flexion and ankle dorsi flexion of state level performers and whereas Gr. Y and Gr. G were not superior in comparing the wrist flexion of state level performers. The result of the present study also showed that the significant difference was not found in comparing the elbow flexion and ankle planter flexion among state level performers.
Conclusion: In most of the cases of flexibility measures, yogic practitioners were superior to gymnasts and footballers and investigator also observed that few of the cases in flexibility measures where gymnasts were superior to footballers. On the other hand, footballers were least flexibility than others two groups.