Relationship of the timing occurrence of somatic maturation stage post peak height velocity with performance in Juniors rowers: A blinded cross-sectional study

Biological maturation (BM) is the phenomenon corresponding to the enhancement of biological systems in the human body (Scheffler & Hermanussen, 2018). In relation to chronological age (CA), BM can be classified as early, synchronized, or late (Malina & Bouchard, 2002). One of the ways to analyze BM is by estimating the peak height velocity (PHV), which is a measure corresponding to the estimate of the period in which the highest growth rate in height will occur (Mirwald et al., 2002). Therefore, adolescent athletes who have already passed through the PHV event (post-PHV) show superior performance than their peers who have not yet passed (pre-PHV) or who are passing (during-PHV) through this BM event (Malina & Bouchard, 2002; Hammami et al., 2016). Theoretically, regardless of whether the PHV occurred early, synchronous, or late, upon arrival at the post-PHV stage the performance differences between adolescent athletes should be minimized or zero. However, athletes in early BM stage reached biological maturation earlier than their synchronized or late peers, thus it is possible that the subject who reached maturity earlier still has advantages regarding physical performance compared to their peers who reached maturity later.