Karate Efficiency and the Development of Some Anthropological Features among 7th and 8th Grade Pupils in Elementary School

The aim of this research is to identify significant anthropological factors important for success in a karate fight by which we may obtain some information on the complexity of karate in the latent structure significant in the application of karate as a sport in education, and as part of curricular and extracurricular activities. For this purpose, we applied a set of 18 anthropometrical measures, a set of 10 basic motor tests, a set of 5 situation-related motor karate tests, a set of 8 performance marks in 6 basic karate techniques and 2 karate kata on the sample of 105 pupils aged 13-15 who, in addition to their physical education classes, have been engaged in karate training for at least 4 years. By factor analyses in the morphological domain, we isolated the ecto-mesomorphy factor and endomorphy factor; in the basic motor domain we isolated the factor of general motor efficiency; in the situation-related motor domain we isolated the factor of specific speed and the factor of specific agility and in the domain of karate techniques performance marks, we isolated the factor of technical efficiency. Further on, by applying canonical discriminant analyses we established differences between quality and less quality pupils all active karate athletes in the complete domain of isolated factors. The discriminant function showed that karate athletes of higher quality, compared to those of lower quality, mostly differ in greater technical efficiency, followed by greater basic and specific motor efficiency, in addition to having some less adipose tissue.