DISCUSSION
Prevalence of overweight in volleyball
The prevalence of overweight (27.5%) among adolescent volleyball players in our study was higher than previous findings in schoolchildren. For instance, this prevalence was 13.2% in 11‐17 year,[22] 22.3% in 6‐17 year[23] and 23.0% in 16‐19 year.[24] This comparison indicated that overweight affects volleyball players in a higher extent than it does in general population. Moreover, in our sample only two adolescent participants were classified as obese, which was lower than the reference data we used. With regard to adult players, the occurrence of overweight (12.3%) was much lower than respective value from a study conducted on the general population of three Balkan countries, which had revealed 31.4% overweight and 12.4% obese adults.[25]
Nevertheless, the occurrence of overweight in our study’s adolescents was unexpected given the current BMI of elite adult volleyball players. The comparison of the appearance of overweight between adolescent and adult participants revealed higher prevalence in the younger age group. In addition, BMI of adult volleyball players participating in our study was 22.4 ± 2.4 kg.m‐2, close to values reported by other studies on elite Greek players (21.7 ± 1.2 kg.m‐2[26] and 21.9 ± 1.9 kg.m‐2[27]). In terms of mean and standard deviation,