Differences In Lower Body Strength, Power Between Genders

INTRODUCTION: Athletic individuals have many characteristics, which make them more elite than the average individual. When determining an individual’s physical fitness level, strength, power, and agility are commonly examined. When measuring strength, power, and agility in elite athletes the scores are compared to some portion of body composition such as muscle cross-sectional area and fat-free mass. When looking at the same factors in recreationally trained individuals the research mostly normalized to body weight. PURPOSE: To examine the differences in lower body strength, power, and agility in male and female recreationally trained individuals when normalized to body mass, fat-free mass, and absolute mass. METHODOLOGY: This study consisted of 43 (males: n= 20, females: n= 23) recreationally trained individuals with ages ranging from 18-29 years of age. The participant completed a one repetition maximum test, countermovement jump, and a reactive shuttle run, and they participated in a body composition test, via air displacement plethysmography. All raw scores were recorded for both males and females for the One Repetition Maximum (1RM), Countermovement jump (CMJ), and Reactive Shuttle Run. Data analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics. The best trial for each test was normalized to each individual’s body mass (BM), fat-free mass (FFM), and fat mass (FM). To check for the distribution of the data tests of skewness, kurtosis, histogram analysis, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, and Shapiro-Wilks were used to check normality. Pearson’s product moment correlations were used to determine the associations between FFM, FM, and body mass compared to raw scores. Two-tailed independent T-tests, with an alpha level of 0.05, were conducted to determine if significant differences existed between males and females within the 1RM, CMJ, and Reactive Shuttle Test for raw scores. RESULTS: There was no significant differences between male and female strength (p=0.33; d=0.05) power (CMJ: p=0.29; d=0.07; Peak Power: p=0.70; d=0.51) and agility (r=0.42, ppd=0.46), power (CMJ: pd=0.43, pd=0.60) and agility ((r=0.38,