Determining the differences in physical development and performance between the healthy and regular and irrorly nutritions in 10 - 12 year group athletes

The study was carried out between December 2022 and May 2023 in order to determine the differences in the physical development of the football club athletes of Kayseri Metropolitan Municipality Spor A.Ş. In the study, daily food consumption, monthly training results and physical development of the volunteer athlete group were followed. The daily calories of the athletes and their performance at exercise intensity were observed. As a result of the study, the importance of balanced nutrition and the differences that a balanced diet will create were determined. The knowledge levels of the athletes about healthy nutrition, their diets before important competitions were followed and how these food group preferences affect the competition performance was followed. The information of the athletes about fluid consumption and nutritional support products was observed. Performance differences were found between the athletes who took the ideal amount of fluid depending on their fluid consumption and those who did not. From whom the athletes received information about nutritional supplements and their use of nutritional supplements were determined. Questionnaires were administered on a voluntary basis in a face-to-face environment. The sample of the study consists of 60 volunteer athletes in the 10-12 age group in Kayseri Metropolitan Municipality Spor A.Ş football club. Participants were asked to fill in a general information form in which age, gender, nutritional habits were questioned, performance follow-up chart, physical development follow-up chart and a daily food consumption record. Evaluation of the data was done with IBM SPSS Statistics v25 program. In the study, the comparison of descriptive statistics in terms of means for bivariate data with normal distribution was obtained with the Independent Sample T Test, and for data without normal distribution, the Chi-Square Test. The Fisher Exact Test was used for data of more than two groups that were not normally distributed. Significance level was taken as P<0,05 in the study. It has been observed that balanced nutrition can have an effect on physical development and performance in athletes.