Contribution of high school sport participation to young adult bone strength

Many sports, such as basketball and volleyball, require powerful muscle movements in addition to ground impacts. Both muscle forces and ground impacts are signals for increasing bone strength. Therefore, sport participation is associated with strong bones. In the United States, there were nearly 8 million participants in interscholastic high school sports for the 2016-2017 school year. Unfortunately, sport participation declines as adolescents reach young adulthood. For this reason, we wanted to assess the longitudinal effects of interscholastic high school sport participation on young adult bone strength. Additionally, we wanted to see if muscle power was responsible for the increases in bone strength.

Two hundred ninety-five young adults (18-21 years old; 163 females, 132 males) had clinical scans performed for bone strength and structure. Additionally, the participants were classified into sport participation groups based on an interscholastic sport participation history questionnaire (Power Sport Participant, Other Sport Participant, Nonparticipant). Participants also completed questionnaires to assess current physical activity and performed vertical jumps as a measure of muscle power. Relationships between sport groups and bone strength were examined. Furthermore, differences between the average bone strength values in the three different sport groups were calculated. Finally, we assessed if muscle power could explain the differences in bone outcomes from the sport groups. The results indicate that male sport participants and female Power Sport Participants have stronger bones than peers even when accounting for current physical activity. Muscle power did not fully explain differences in all bone outcomes suggesting that sport participation has additional bone health benefits.