@article{ref1,
title="Child-adult differences in the kinetics of torque development",
journal="Journal of sports sciences",
year="2013",
author="Dotan, Raffy and Mitchell, Cameron and Cohen, Rotem and Gabriel, David and Klentrou, Panagiota and Falk, Bareket",
volume="31",
number="9",
pages="945-953",
abstract="Abstract Children have lower size-normalised maximal voluntary force, speed, and power than adults. It has been hypothesised that these and other age-related performance differences are due to lesser type-II motor-unit utilisation in children. This should be manifested as slower force kinetics in explosive muscle contractions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of child-adult force-kinetics differences and whether the latter could support that hypothesis. Untrained boys (n = 20) and men (n = 20) (10.1 ± 1.3 and 22.9 ± 4.4 years, respectively), performed maximal, explosive, isometric elbow flexions and knee extensions on a Biodex dynamometer. Peak torque (MVC), times to 10-100% MVC, and other kinetics parameters were determined. The boys' body-mass-normalised knee extension MVC, peak rate of torque development, and %MVC at 100 ms were 26, 17 and 23% lower compared with the men and their times to 30% and 80% MVC were 24 and 48% longer, respectively. Elbow flexion kinetics showed similar or greater differences. The findings illuminate boys' inherent disadvantage in tasks requiring speed or explosive force. It is demonstrated that the extent of the boys-men kinetics disparity cannot be explained by muscle-composition and/or musculo-tendinous-stiffness differences. We suggest therefore that the findings indirectly support children's lower utilisation of type-II motor units.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0264-0414",
doi="10.1080/02640414.2012.757343",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2012.757343"
}