Puberty and timing of puberty impacts many aspects of fitness in youth. For an overview see the Malina, Bouchard, Bar-Or text on growth maturation and physical activity. Regarding the concept of the clumsy phase where adolescents become less refined in their motor control during periods of rapid growth, there is little empirical evidence for this, however, if you speak to any high level gymnastics coach they will convince that from their experience it occurs.

Hi, your question is very relevant. I've been involved in research on adolescents on a continuum of motor competence and oould share some references with you.

There are some longitudinal studies on the impact of growth on adolescents who perform on a continuum of motor competence, e.g., you can see the research of Dr. Jan Visser:

1) Visser, J., Geuze, R. H., & Kalverboer, A. F. (1998). The relationship between physical growth, the level of activity and the development of motor skills in adolescence: Differences between children with DCD and controls. Human Movement Science, 17(4), 573-608.

2) Visser, J., & Geuze, R.H. (2000). Kinaesthetic acuity in adolescent boys: A longitudinal study. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 42, 93–96.

Another researcher who has investigated the development of motor skills in relation to health-related fitness and BMI is Prof. Beth Hands. You can see her publications:

3) Hands, B. (2008). Changes in motor skill and fitness measures among children with high and low motor competence: a five-year longitudinal study. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 11(2), 155-162.

4) Hands, B., Larkin, D., Parker, H., Straker, L., & Perry, M. (2009). The relationship among physical activity, motor competence and health‐related fitness in 14‐year‐old adolescents. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 19(5), 655-663.

I carried out a cross-sectional study (children, adolescents, adults) in which we found e.g., that some of the tasks used to measure fitness can be hampered by the level of motor skills.

Cantell, M., Crawford, S. G., & Doyle-Baker, P. K. (2008). Physical fitness and health indices in children, adolescents and adults with high or low motor competence. Human Movement Science, 27(2), 344-362.

I hope these are useful!

Hello Marja,

I would like to thank you for the attention and the references, was of great value and significance.

thank you

It is known that during puberty in boys there is a peak of growth which often occurs after they've become quite good at some sports. Becoming good at sports often requires a fine-tuned perceptual-motor coordination which takes into account the characteristics of the person and the relevant information sources in the environment. As an extreme example, if you're a basketball player and you grow overnight by 5 centimeters it is quite likely that tomorrow you'll be overshooting in your free throws. This would be because your perceptual-motor system hasn't had time to re-calibrate to the new dimensions (a little similar to having the basket suddenly lowered by 5 centimeters). Therefore theoretically this makes perfect sense. In practice the loss and regaining of coordinated movement is a matter of how fast the perceptual-motor system can recalibrate.

There is also a small chance that they might be drunk :)

Very important subject