athletes, throwers, segmental analysis, body composition

There are a lot of sports where one limb is dominant when considering undertaking a sporting performance. It is the limb which is characterized by a higher performance. This fact results in loading the dominant limb to a higher extent in specialized training aimed at developing techniques, skills and abilities that should lead to accomplishing an athlete?s maximum performance. The specialized training begins approximately at the age of 14; therefore athletes reaching their youth and junior age categories would have been exposed to this asymmetric burden for several years. Athletes in a number of athletics disciplines who use one of the upper limbs for a throw or shot-put in their athletic performance represent a typical example. These limbs are clearly dominant for such types of performance, as the performance is only carried out by one upper limb in most throwing disciplines (hammer throw being the one exception). The best possible performance in a throw or shot-put is pre-conditioned by the strength of the competitive limb. Ergo, it gives rise to a question whether this fact will also be reflected in different values of the body composition of the competitive and non-competitive upper limb. Nonetheless, as low asymmetry as possible between the two limbs is advisable for the healthy development of an individual and to minimize the occurrence of injuries (Heyward & Gibson, 2014; Lopes, Junior, Yeung, & Costa, 2012).The study aims to assess the effect of a long-term specific burden on a competitive and non-competitive limb based on the segmental analysis of the body composition of the upper limbs in athletes.