Make more accurate decisions with tennis-specific reactive agility tests
Agility is considered one of the most important abilities for success in many sports, including tennis. Check out an overview of the reliability, validity and sensitivity of newly developed tennis-specific reactive agility tests.
Observed test can improve and advance the existing procedures, and make the results more reliable and precise.
Blog is based on scientific research - Sinkovic, F.; Foretic, N.; Novak, D. Reliability, Validity and Sensitivity of Newly Developed Tennis-Specific Reactive Agility Tests. Sustainability 2022, 14(20),13321
The disadvantage is that all the aforementioned tests were created to measure agility in which changes in the direction of movement are planned in advance. That is another important reason why it is necessary to develop a sport-specific test that assesses reactive agility, which is key to success in tennis. Reactive agility is manifested in conditions when a person needs to perform an agile movement structure but in such a way that it must react to some kind of stimulus. Most often in the area of reactive agility, the stimulus is actually a visual stimulus, which is completely clear because athletes perform agile movements based on the visual observations of either the opponent’s movement or the trajectory of the ball.
So, from this it can be concluded how reactive agility includes a cognitive component, i.e., the factors of observation and enactment of a decision to some stimulus that cannot be assessed by older agility tests. Everything mentioned above leads to the conclusion that the newly constructed test in this research will be able to better and more precisely measure agility compared to already known basic tests. For the newly constructed test to be usable it must have good metric characteristics, and this primarily refers to reliability and validity. Sports-specific tests provide more detailed information about the real state of those traits and abilities that ultimately ensure the success of the player at the top level of competition
Why Test Reactive Agility In Tennis
In tennis, players very often change the direction of movement, so planned and reactive agility are considered extremely important motor dimensions. Despite the importance of agility in tennis, there is very little scientific research that has dealt with this motor dimension, especially in specific conditions. An underlying problem in this lack of research is the lack of adequate tests; therefore, there has been an increasingly pronounced trend of constructing and validating new ones. To date, agility in tennis has mostly been measured with standardised basic tests, but newly conducted research offers a new specific agility test. Studies whose primary goal is the construction of new sport-specific tests for agility assessment are usually based on the modification of already existing basic agility tests such as “T-test”, “505 test”, or the “Spider drill test”.
Check Out The Results And The Whole Research
The results of this research confirmed the hypothesis and showed that the newly constructed agility tests have extremely good metric characteristics, especially the reactive agility test. This study proposed a new procedure for the assessment of preplanned and reactive agility in young tennis players, which will significantly improve and advance the existing procedures and make the results more reliable and precise. Leave us your email so we can send you full report.
Perform Specific Reactive Agility Tennis Test
Agility variables were measured with newly constructed tests for the assessment of preplanned agility (CODS) and reactive agility (RAG). The tests were measured using the Sportreact system. The generic tennis agility test T-test was used to validate the mentioned tests. The T-test is considered the gold standard for measuring agility in tennis and includes forward, sideways and backward sprints.
The preplanned agility (CODS) and reactive agility (RAG) tests were constructed in such a way that the examinees imitated specific movements in tennis (Figure 1). The examinees start from a predetermined starting line in both tests. At the moment when the infrared signal (IR1) located next to the starting line is interrupted by the “split step”, the time starts to be measured and one of the two lights (L1 or L2) lights up. The participant should recognize which light has turned on, run with an overstepping and lateral technique to the side to the stand with a ball placed on it (S1 or S2) and hit the aforementioned ball forehand or backhand in front of the body with enough force that the ball hits the ground. After playing the shot, the player should return as quickly as possible to the device in front of the starting line and interrupt the infrared signal (IR2) again, which ends the measurement. In the preplanned agility test (CODS), the subjects know in advance which light will turn on; that is, they can plan in advance to run and play forehand or backhand shots. Each test was performed nine times, and for further processing, the mean measured value of both tests was taken].
Introduction To Reactive Agility
Agility Is defined as a rapid whole-body movement with change of velocity and/or direction in response to a stimulus. The great impact of agility on the achievement of top sports results has been confirmed in numerous studies. There are two relatively independent manifested forms of agility. The first is nonreactive or preplanned agility (change of direction speed-CODS), which is characterised by a change in the direction of movement that is already known in advance; that is, it is planned, and the players do not need to react to a specific stimulus. The second form of agility is reactive or unplanned agility (Reactive agility-RAG), which includes a cognitive component, i.e., observation and decision-making factors.
