Understanding the assessment of biological maturation

Abstract

The reason of this research paper is to review the literature that is applied to understand how to analyze the biological maturation assessment in athletes at young ages. The methods used to estimate biological maturity are skeletal maturity, sexual maturity, somatic or morphological maturity, and dental maturity. Among all these methods, skeletal maturation seems to be the most used, and its importance comes from the need of obtaining how ossified the bones are, to know the biological age among young athletes. Sophisticated methods of measuring biological maturity are still costly which make it hard for the practitioner to afford it. Physical Education coaches should prevent grouping students with difference in biological maturation to match up in collisional sports. Indirect assessment should be implemented any time is possible, like at the beginning of the school year, and past the half of the year.