Introduction: According to the literature, anthropometric
and physiological variables may be a determinant success factor for the players’ performance.
Objective: Verify the in:fuence of anthropometric mea- sures on player's performance. Verify the in:fuence of eat- ing habits on player’s performance.
Methods: A cross-sectional, quantitative, observational and analytical study was developed. A sample of 87 Soccer Players from Superliga (Portuguese Football League) was collected. Anthropometric measures were evaluated using a Tanita® body composition analyzer TBF-300, a compass Cescorf® and a tape measure. Eating habits were assessed using food diaries. The Cooper test was used to evaluate the player’s performance. SPSS 21.0 was used to com- pute descriptive statistics and Kruskal-Wallis and Mann- Whitney tests.
Results: The performance evaluation showed that players covered, in average, 2,706.3 (SD=220) meters, enabling to realize that 12.6% had a medium performance, 16.1% have a good performance and the two highest ratings, Excellent and Superior, both represented 35.6%. Differences, statisti- cally, significant were found in some anthropometric mea- sures, namely, waist circumference (p=0.045), the suprailiac skinfold (p=0.000) and biceps skinfold (p=0.001), when performance was considered. Relatively to eating habits, statistically, significant differences were not found in all parameters: protein, fat, carbohydrate, water, dietary fiber, vitamin D and magnesium (p>0,05).
Conclusions: Players with greater waist circumference have a lower performance and players with bigger biceps suprailiac skinfold have lower performance. These differ- ences may be due to the effect of body fat. However, fur- ther studies are needed to confirm this hypothesis.
