Abstract

The present study assessed the effects of rope training and weighted rope training on muscle damage sustained by basketball players. The study group comprised  36 male basketball players, all of whom have a minimum of 4 years experience of basketball.  Participants were aged between 17 and 19 years, and played in the junior league.  The Rope Group (n = 12) and Weighted Rope Group (n = 12) received one week preparatory rope training, in addition to technical training. They then  trained three days per week for eight weeks. A control group (n = 12) received only technical training for three days per week for eight weeks. In the first and last training sessions, venous blood samples were obtained from subjects before and after the training. The samples were tested for creatine kinase (CK), leukocyte and erythrocyte levels. Statistical analysis of the data was conducted with SPSS (Version 10.0). T-test and ANOVA were used to test for normality level and multi comparison tests, at the 0.05 and 0.01 levels. The results indicated that creatine kinase and leukocyte levels, which are the indicators of muscle damage,  increased  following high-intensity physical activity ; furthermore, erythrocyte level increased in line with exercise in order to transport oxygen to tissues. The findings suggest that intensive weighted rope training causes damages to muscles.

Key words: Basketball, weighted rope training, muscle damage.