Comparison of Body Composition of Wushu Players and Wushu Players with Boxing and Taekwondo Experiences

Abstract

Wushu Sanda is a combat sport and performances are based on the body parametric of the competitive Wushu athletes. The main objective of this study was to compare the body composition of the Wushu athletes and Wushu athletes who had previously competed in early Boxing and Taekwondo sports. With the population sampling method, the study included 20 elite male Wushu athletes who were grassroots level engaging in Wushu (Mean age 31.65±3.26 years), eleven athletes who were earlier engaged in Boxing (Mean age 31.00±4.12 years), and 10 engaged in Taekwondo (Mean age 31.60±3.71 years) at a highly competitive national level mean training age more than five years. The sample was selected form the population of the 2022 registered national athletes of the National Wushu Championship weight bearing between 52kg and 80kg. Measured body composition parameters were analyzed with the univariate mean comparison among the early experienced sports groups. The comparison was done by the Oneway ANOVA with Tukey Post Hoc statistical test with SPSS software. The study emphasized that there was a significant difference in the total body muscle mass percentage (p=0.001) and it was observed among early experienced groups but there was no significant difference for the total body fat mass percentage (p=0.225). Within the confines of the study, there were significant differences found between each group and it was found between the Taekwondo athletes and Wushu experienced athletes.