Post-exercise coincidence anticipation in expert and novice Gaelic games players: the effects of exercise intensity

Abstract

Within the current scientific literature, there is a distinct lack of empirical data examining the effects of exercise intensity on coincidence anticipation and, to date, no study has examined this in Gaelic games. Furthermore, many previous studies failed to consider fully sport specificity. The aims of this study were to examine the effect of moderate- and high-intensity exercise on coincidence anticipation and to determine whether post-exercise changes in coincidence anticipation were the same in novice and expert Gaelic games players (hurlers). Eleven expert and nine novice hurlers participated in this study. After familiarization, coincidence anticipation was measured using the Bassin Anticipation Timer at rest, following moderate- and high-intensity exercise. Exercise intensities were set using an incremental running protocol until the participants reached steady-state 70% and 90% heart rate reserve. To simulate hitting a ball, participants swung or “pulled” using a continuous swing at full speed with a standard hurley through a photoelectric beam as close to the actual arrival time of the stimulus at the target location as possible. Immediately following each exercise condition, participants performed 20 anticipation trials. All testing was randomized and counterbalanced. Raw scores were transformed to three error scores – constant error, absolute error, and log variable error. The effect of exercise intensity on constant error, absolute error, and log variable error was analysed using separate 3 (exercise intensities)×20 (trials)×2 (levels of skill) repeated-measures analyses of variance. The results showed no between- or within-group differences for constant error (P>0.05). For both absolute error and log variable error there were highly significant between-group differences (both P<0.01), which indicated that the expert hurlers at all exercise intensities exhibited significantly better coincidence anticipation than novice players probably due to experience among other factors. Further within-group analyses showed no differences in the expert players’ performance across exercise intensities. However, within-group analyses on the novice players’ data showed a significant difference between performance at rest and performance following moderate-intensity exercise. The results suggest that expert players are capable of maintaining coincidence anticipation performance across exercise intensities but the novice players performed optimally following moderate-intensity exercise.