Abstract. Sports activities ask for continuing increase of the level and complexity of physical effort. Besides the issues related to the training, most coaches and athletes focus on nutrition, on effort and recovery. Due to its high nutritious value and benefits for health, bee honey has been used as both food and medicine from times immemorial. Natural bee honey contains water, sugars, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, proteins, inhibin, and antioxidants. The supply of carbohydrates, amino acids, minerals, vitamins, fats, and antioxidants ingested while drinking associated with strength training ensures the premises for improvement of force and strength in legs and contributes to the recovery after effort and to ensuring optimum health by increasing immunity and control of hydration before, during, and after effort. Research was carried out between January 15 and March 15, 2015, on a group of 15 junior tennis players aged 1-14 (5 girls and 10 boys). First, we analysed the chemical composition of the pollen and bee honey ingested by the athletes. Each athlete ingested daily, two months before, during, and after the effort, a drink made of 3 lemons, 20-30 g of polyflorous pollen, and 40-50 g of polyflorous bee honey dissolved in 1 l of water.The subjects were assessed at the beginning and at the end from the point of view of their body composition, explosive strength (during the triple extension of the legs) and flash while jumping five times. To assess force and explosive strength in the legs, we used the Myotest System (Sion, Switzerland). For a detailed analysis of the body composition, we used a multi-frequency bio-impedantometer (InBody 720). Thus, we determined several parameters such as overall muscle weight, fat weight, or segmental muscle weight. Re-assessment of the subjects after eight weeks of training shows a significant improvement of such Results show the benefits of strength training in junior tennis players associated with ingestion of apicultural produce before competitions. Most parameters of muscle performance analysed here improved as well as strength development pliometrics.

apicultural produce, physical training, strength, body weight, tennis

biology

Presentation: poster