Abstract

The horizontal acceleration and agility are both an essential part of sports performance in handball. The foot placement variability has been shown to vary between differences in speed and direction of running. However, no studies have considered the connection between the foot placement variability, forward acceleration and agility performance. In the present study, a proposed repetitive single leg countermovement drift test was analyzed as a measure of the foot placement variability and correlated with forward sprinting and agility performance in handball players. Twenty-three male handball players performed a series of 10 consecutive single leg countermovement jumps, 10 m forward acceleration sprint, a handball adapted T-agility test and a single leg countermovement jump test. Correlations between the drift area, T-agility test duration, acceleration performance are measured as well as the time used to accelerate at a 5 m and 10 m distance and the height of the single leg countermovement jump. The drift area for the non-dominant leg had high and significant negative correlations with the first 5 m of forward acceleration sprinting and a positive correlation with the T-agility test to the non-dominant side. The countermovement jump height had no significant correlation to any other parameters. This data indicates that the foot placement variability of the jumps performed on the non-dominant leg could be an indicator of the ability to control stability during short forward acceleration sprints and a quick change of direction. On the contrary, these correlations disappeared when the direction change was performed under reaction time conditions.

Highlights

  • The horizontal acceleration is an essential part of the performance in team sports such as handball

  • The foot placement variability measured with a drift during the repetitive single leg countermovement jumps proved to have an important correlation to sprinting and agility performance

  • No significant correlations were observed between the maximal single leg countermovement jumping height and t1 or any Tt times

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Summary

Introduction

The horizontal acceleration is an essential part of the performance in team sports such as handball. The speed of forward movement has been shown to have no or moderate correlation to the speed of lateral movements (Swinton, Lloyd, Keogh, Agouris, & Stewart, 2014; Tomáš, František, Lucia, & Jaroslav, 2014) or agility measured with a T-test (Alemdaroğlu, 2012) This suggests that movement in different directions demands specific movement controlling strategies as suggested by more basic studies on motor control (Seethapathi & Srinivasan, 2019). This is partially supported by studies assessing the effects of training on horizontal or vertical power production ability in sprinting and agility performance. In order to avoid the influence of differences in body height between subjects, the Area was normalized (NArea) as presented by the Equation 1

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