This was a sort of thinking (or actually rambling) in my head that came to me after I was going through the old threads and posts on the dead GrowTallForum.com which I found using the Wayback Machine. You can find the link by clicking HERE 

The thread I found was sort of arguing whether playing basketball can be the cause of greater height and that really got me thinking.

One poster wrote…

“Here’s one for the basketball players. A really good exercise that helps you grow taller is jumping! Several nerves are connected at the sole of your feet that are also connected to your thyroid and pituitary gland, which is responsible for releasing the hormones needed for your body to grow. Jumping allows for the production of electric current to flow through your body and to tell your brain “hey I wanna grow!” That’s why basketball players are very tall, they jump and reach out every day, they can’t help it but grow very very tall.”

Other posters say…

“Bababooey explained it somewhere on this forum. Basically, jumping involved in Basketball increases fluid flow in the growth plates so more IGF-1 goes into height increase.”

What is most interesting was the poster Bababooey…

HYPOTHESIS:

The jumping involved in playing basketball–as would jumping in any activity–triggers growth on the growth plate perhaps by increased blood flow to the growth plates (in the legs and spine) or some such result of the act of jumping. The act of jumping temporarily suspends the spine and legs in the air followed by a compression with the combined force of gravity and an individual’s body weight. The compression perhaps increases blood flow to the non-bone segments of your body impacted by the compression–namely, your growth plates. Increased blood flow to the growth plates may direct growth-related hormones specifically to the growth plates–where it is needed the most for height increase.

Analysis & Interpretation

These three explanations forced me to consider the possibility that maybe, just MAYBE that basketball might be one of those activities that does result in slightly more growth vertically than say another sport like soccer. A long time ago I had written a post “Grow Taller By Playing Basketball, Or Not” arguing the idea that correlation does not suggest causation. I had said that the more likely thing that happened was that your natural genes make you taller, and you went into the sport of basketball naturally because of the height.

Now I have to rethink the basic premise and wonder whether whether the reverse causation might be possible.

I first look at what might be different in body mechanical movement of basketball players than other athletes playing others sports. In soccer and rugby, there is a lot of running. In rugby and american football, there is also a lot of hitting besides running. In baseball, there is a lot of down town followed by a short burst of running.

Then there is gymnastics, swimming, tennis, cheerleading, or whatever popular sports one might find in the american high school athletic program.

So what is the main body movement that basketball players do which the other sport do a lot less of in terms of frequency?

A lot of people argued that maybe it was the act of jumping. Bababooey’s comment was most interesting because he looks at the real physics and mechanics of what is happening to the body if one starts playing basketball.

Jumping in adolescents with still open growth plates suggest that the plates may be having occasional shocks to the system. A basketball runs most of the time but sometimes in reaching for the ball for a rebound, they do jump up. The jump means a fraction of second of weightlessness and then the plates are compressed. I have found around 1-2 PubMed studies (source 1) which showed that axial compression on the leg or growth plates will indeed stunt longitudinal growth. That is a given. But that might only assume a constant, continuous load which is static. What if the compression is dynamic and also only happens occasionally.

This is what we know.

• Jumping might lead to growth plate fractures if the player lands wrong. It is still cartilage

What I am proposing in this post is that maybe the jumping might cause the growth plates in young people who play basketball which is at the point of just about to completely ossify to fracture at the line where the bone bridge is finally starting to show. The jump fractures the bone bridge which is what leads to the cartilage turning into a line causing the bone to still have at least a natural distraction that remains.

The distraction that remains may have a little bit of epiphyseal cartilage still left but that is enough to keep the basketball player to add a little height.

 

Where as the soccer player is always running, and getting a steady rate of pounding/compression on the growth plate, the occasional elevated jump made by a basketball player means that a sudden extra intense compression could crush not just the cartilage, but also the bone.

Humans have always been walking and running so the growth plates and surrounding bones are supposed to be strong enough to take those activities on the leg, but the plates and bone may not be designed to take the unusual frequency of jumping.

Thee 2nd point I would say that might give the basketball jumping credibility is that fact that longitudinal growth is not linear, which I would learn about very recently. It seems that longitudinal growth comes in very short “mini-growth spurts”. We know that the growth rate of children is higher at night than during the day. We also know that the growth rate of children during the summer is higher than the other seasons. We also know that the growth rate in one 2 week interval can be very different in another 2 week interval. This means that the GH that the hypothalamus and pituitary are releasing is not in any type of sinusoidal cyclical fashion. It is irregular in when the pulse of growth hormone is released.

It could be that indeed the jumping affect causes a slightly higher amount of blood and the growth factors inside to  reach the fractures that are created when the basketball player jumps and lands down on the ground. fractures are created in the groove or surface-to-surface edge between the cartilage and the bone. This means that the body has to respond to heal the fracture. more blood goes to the fracture region which are carrying the growth factors like the BMPs and the TGF-Betas needed.

The jumping might be rythmic with the bouncing of the ball, and the pulsation of the pituitary gland might actually sync up with the bouncing of the ball.

If this is indeed the case where basketball which has a bouncing, rythmic effect on how the GH in the brain is released, sort of syncing up the frequency of growth hormome release with the bouncy of the ball like what happens during resonant frequency, and the fact that occasional jumping prevents the growth plates from being able to close when they are supposed to from breaking down bone bridges formed, it might suggest that indeed basketball might be one of those activities that young kids can do to increase their height and also make the growing period be slightly longer.

Afterthought:

The problem of course is that there is a clear counter-arguement when we look at the case with gymnastics and gymnasts. Gymnasts are known very well for their short height but they get about the same frequency of jumping, like in the high bar, the vault, or the tumbling. Many martial artists also have have a lot of jumping but they seem to be average height. I could argue on the issue with gymnasts that the type of jumping and landing they do is at an intensity too high where the growth plates are more likely to be crushed than to stimulate gh release.

Personal Opinion

If I was to make my own personal guess at the relationship between basketball and tall stature, I would still have to say that it is more likely that you are first tall naturally,then you get picked by the local school coach (or more likely coerced) into playing on the JV or Varsity basketball team, than if in the case where you grow tall from playing basketball. If scientist or researchers would ever try to spend millions of dollars to see what is the correlation, whether is is causal or reverse causal, i would bet that they would find little evidence that playing basketball would lead to increased height, if they averaged out the individual cases, and normalized all the numbers into a normal bell curve distribution. I hope this issue is finally resolved and never brought back up.