KINANTHROPOMETRY Anthropometric Characteristics and Somatotype of Dragon Boat Paddlers

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Introduction
Dragon Boating is a paddle-driven water sport that originated in China over 2000 years ago.Dragon Boat racing was a part of Chinese traditional culture which held on the 5 th day of the 5 th lunar month of the Chinese calendar.The boating was held in China to avert misfortune and encourage rains for prosperity.Today, Dragon boat DOI: 10.34256/ijk23212 racing has become a popular folk sport across the world, and in around 90 countries including the US, Canada, the UK, Japan, and India play and participate in dragon boat racing competitions.The International Dragon Boat Federation (IDBF) based in the United Kingdom along with the European Dragon Boat Federation (EDBF) and Asian Dragon Boat Federation (ADBF) govern Dragon Boating as a sport in over 90 countries.
Thus, the present study aimed to find out the Anthropometric and somatotype characteristics of Indian national Dragon Boat Paddlers which can be used as a reference for future research.

Studied Population
29 Female and 36 male paddlers of the Indian National Dragon Boat team who participated in the 16 th IDBF World Dragon Boat Racing Championship 2023 at Pattaya, Thailand were measured for their physical characteristics and body composition before their participation at a national training camp at Kolkata, India.

Anthropometrical measurements
Anthropometric measurements were taken two times on the same day for each paddler to avoid the Technical error of Measurements (TEM).Measurements were taken by two accredited anthropometrists.Anthropometric measurements were measured according to methods standardized by the International Society for The Advancement of Kinanthropometry (ISAK) following the ISAK manual (2019).
Stature was measured with a Stadiometer and body mass was measured with an electronic weighing scale.Harpenden Skinfold caliper (Bety, UK) was used to measure skinfold thicknesses.For girth measurement, an anthropometric tape (CESCORF, Brazil) was used.A sliding caliper (CESCORF) was used to measure bone diameters.

Discussion
Dragon Boat racing is a paddle-driven water sport where physical characteristics and somatotype are very important factors for better performance besides other factors like physiological, biomechanical, psychological, and  In the present study, the average height of the male paddlers was 170.1 (±5.2) cm with a range between 159.5 cm and 182.1 whereas that of Female paddlers was 162.0 ( ±6.5) cm with a range between 150.5 cm and 175.5 cm ( Table 2).The average height of the male Indian Dragon Boat paddlers was very similar to Malaysian Dragon Boat paddlers but less than Japanese, Chinese and Australian male Dragon Boat Paddlers (Table 4).The average Body weight of Indian male Dragon Boat paddlers was higher than the Malaysian paddlers but less than their Japanese, Chinese and Australian counterparts (Table 4).The average height of the Indian Female Dragon Boat paddlers was slightly less than the Australian female Dragon Boat paddlers but close to or very similar to Iranian and Thai female counterparts (Table 5).These differences and similarities in physical characteristics might be due to geographical variances as except for Australian paddlers, all other paddlers were from Asian countries (Table 4, Table 5).
The average Somatotype category of Indian female Dragon Boat paddlers was Mesomorphic Endomorph (5.6-3.5-2.4) with moderate muscularity (Table 1) whereas the Indian male Dragon Boat paddlers were Endomorphic mesomorph (3.4-5.0-2.1) in average with Moderate muscularity ( Table 2).Thus, both male and female paddlers of the present study were with moderate muscularity in average according to the Classification of Carter 1990 (Table 6) which should be high or more.The average Endomoprphic component of the Indian male Dragon Boat paddlers of the present study was in the Low category whereas that of Females was in the High category (Table 1, Table 2).The average high adiposity of the female paddlers was also reflected in the presence of a high percentage of Fat both in male and female paddlers (Table 1 and 2).33.3 % of male paddlers were Endomorphic mesomorph whereas only 3.6 % of female paddlers were of that category.On the contrary, 42. 9 % of female paddlers were Mesomorphic endomorph whereas only 8.4 % of male counterparts were of that category.Thus, adiposity was more in female paddlers than in male counterparts which might be due to gender differences.Ectomoprhic mesomorph which was supposed to be the ideal body type for both male and female athletes was very less (16.7%) in male paddlers and absent in female paddlers.Instead of that Balanced Endomorph (21.4%) was more in female paddlers and Balanced mesomorph was absent.5.5 % of male paddlers were in central whereas only 3.6 % of female paddlers were in central.16.7 % of male paddlers were in the Balanced mesomorph category whereas another 16.7 % were in the Ectomorphic mesomorph category.There were no Endomorph ectomorph category paddlers in the male group whereas 7.1 % of females were of Endomorph ectomorph category (Table 3).Sufficient muscle mass with a rich ATP-CP system is required to generate more energy during paddling (McArdle and Katch 2010, Adhikari and Chakrabarti 2022, Chakrabarti and Adhikari 2023).Ectomorphic Mesomorph body type with high mesomorph components may be one of the important and required Physical demands for good performance in Rowing (Adhikari andChakrabarti 2022, 2023)

Conclusion
Thus, from the above discussions it could be concluded that the Indian National Female Dragon Boat Racing paddlers were Endomorphic with low muscularity in average whereas the Male National Dragon Boat Racing paddlers were Mesomorphic with more adiposity in average.

Figure 1 .Figure 2 .
Figure 1.Somatochart of Male Indian National Dragon Boat Racing Paddlers Paddlers . Somatochart plotting showed Endomorphic, Ectomorphic endomorph, and Endomorphic ectomorph zones for the female Dragon boat paddlers of the present study except one who Endomorphic measomorph with less muscle mass ( Fig 1).Male Dragon boat paddlers of the present study were in the Mesomorphic zone but a large number of males were in Endomorphic mesomorph zone indicating more fat in the body along with muscle mass (Fig 2).Paddlers of Water Sports like Rowing, Canoeing, and Kayaking need good muscularity to create forces to move the boat forward.Dragon Sports racing also needs force to move forward which is created by the Dragon boat paddlers.

Table 1 .
Anthropometric characteristics and somatotype of Female Indian Dragon Boat Racing Paddlers (n=28)

Table 3 .
Somatotype categories of Male and Female Dragon Boat Paddlers

Table 4 .
Physical characteristics of Male Dragon Boat paddlers of different countries

Table 2 .
Anthropometric characteristics and somatotype of Male Indian Dragon Boat Racing Paddlers (n=36)

Table 6 .
Carter (1990)Rating values and Relative meanings for all three components

Table 5 .
Physical characteristics of Female Dragon Boat paddlers of different countries