The Effect of FIFA 11 based warm up program on „Y” Balance Test in Teenager football players

Background. The FIFA 11 program was designed and introduced for the team of footballers and its goal was reduction of injuries in footballers. Moreover, the FIFA 11 warm up program introduced in the group of teenage footballers can contribute to improvement of body balance and “Y” test results. Therefore, the main goal of this paper was assessment of FIFA 11 program effectiveness in improvement of „Y” balance test in the sample of teen­age footballers. Material and methods. 30 subjects were selected for the study and the sample was next randomly divided into 2 equal groups: the experimental group and the control group. The participants’ age ranged from 16 to17 years. In order to assess body balance the test was performed twice prior to FIFA11 warm up program an on completion of the 10-weeks’ workout program. Next, the competitors’ body balance was assessed using „Y” test. In the experimental group, the competitors participated in FIFA warm up program instead of doing standard warm up. Results. The results indicate body balance improvement in the teenager footballers after the 10-day FIFA 11 program, and the “Y” test revealed an improvement of dynamic balance (the right and left lower limbs, mean forward movement p<0.05 and the overall result p<0.05). Moreover, the applied FIFA 11 program contributed to improvement of the total normalized value (as compared with the result of the first test) and the final assessment of 50% of participants (as compared with the first study) revealed that the total result obtained in the experimental group during “Y” test was above 89.6%. Conclusions. The 10 day FIFA 11 program contributed to the improvement of selected parameters of “Y” balance test in teenage football players. Moreover, the introduced FIFA 11 program contributed to the improvement of the normalized value obtained in “Y” test, which was above 89.6%. The presented experimental research has confirmed the potential of FIFA 11 in improvement of selected balance parameters.