Nutrition is essential in ensuring athletes’ optimum sports performance and good health. This study’s objective was to assess the socioeconomic (SE) standards, the nutritional knowledge, and the dietary habits of athletes across three (3) sporting regions in Ghana. Further, this study aimed to examine the relationship between the socioeconomic (SE) standards, the nutritional knowledge, and the dietary habits of athletes. The sample drew from football, hockey and basketball players. Data collection relied on an adapted Dietary Habits and Nutritional Knowledge Questionnaire by Paugh, 2005, while examination of the relationships was done using chi-square tests of association, at 0.050 level of significance. The results showed that athletes had reasonably good nutritional knowledge and dietary habits, this highlighted by mean percentage scores of 69.42% and 66.26%, respectively. Assessment of athletes’ socioeconomic standards indicated that 80% lived on GHS1000 or less, per month. There were statistically significant relationships between sex and dietary habits, p=0.001; between sex and nutritional knowledge, p<0.001; between sporting disciplines and dietary habits, p=0.005; and between sporting disciplines and nutritional knowledge, p=0.021. Tests also revealed a statistically significant relationship between socioeconomic (SE) standard and nutritional knowledge, p=0.016. There was no significant relationship between athletes’ level of nutritional knowledge and their dietary habits, p=0.620. Neither did the study establish any relationship between SE standard and dietary habits, p=0.292. This suggests a need for more in-depth exploration of the relationship between the socioeconomic (SE) standards, nutritional knowledge, and dietary habits of athletes.

As digit ratio (2D:4D) factor corresponds with high level of performances, fine-tune skills and immense ability were evidently found, but however the impact of 2D:4D on aerobic and anaerobic fitness components among younger subjects has yet to be fully understood. Thus, the main objective of this study is to examine the role of 2D:4D towards performance in physical fitness tests comprising of both aerobic-based and anaerobic-based elements. Results were collected from six physical fitness tests involving 594 primary schoolchildren (aged 10 to 12 years old) of both genders. Fingers images were taken through hand scanning method and the ratios were measured and calculated. Priorly, effect of covariances (age and body mass index) was found to have no effect on the fitness tests. For male students, the low 2D:4D of both hands showed various significant relationship with non-anaerobic based tests acquiring lower R2 below 10%. Both genders reported to have higher percentage of variability of dependant variables detected at anaerobic based tests with the highest was found at standing broad jump test. Meanwhile, for the female subjects mixed results were found with all aerobic based tests scored lower R2 below 10%. Overall, low digit ratio was much prominent in anaerobic-based tests in both male and female subjects. This study suggests that 2D:4D thrives more in anaerobic based events/tests among younger subjects and with thorough research, it is possible to implement 2D:4D as additional instrument in identifying sports talents and categorizing potential athletes according to the related fitness components.

On the basis of synthesizing and analyzing the opinions and knowledge of experts, selecting the fitness assessment tests for male athletes of the Vovinam youth team of Ho Chi Minh City aged 16 - 17. Through the research, 10 tests have been identified to assess the physical condition of male athletes of the Vovinam youth team of Ho Chi Minh City age 16 - 17. Initial test results show that the physical strength of Vovinam male athletes is similar with no dispersion.

The aim of the study was to find out the effect of six weeks pilates training on core muscles and BMI of obese children. Ten (10) male children aged 12 to 18 years from Bolpur, Birbhum, West Bengal, India have been selected and purposively divided into Pilates Training Group (PTG) (N=05) and Control Group (CG) (N=05) according to WHO BMI Index (Rush, 2004). Six weeks pilates training programme has been formulated to see the effectiveness of training programme on core muscles strength and BMI. The core muscles strength has been tested by ‘Bunkie Test’ through the performance of functional lines before the training starts and after completion of six weeks pilates training programme and BMI has been calculated by height and weight. Significant improvement in core muscles strength as well as on BMI has been found by analysing and comparing the pre-test and post-test score through descriptive analysis and ANCOVA among the obese children of PTG and CG. So it can be concluded that six weeks of pilates training programme is effective in the improvement of core muscles strength as well as in reduction of fatness and BMI among obese children.