The Trial-Performance Relationship in Javelin and Discus Throwing Events

Abstract

In high level sports, trials are essential for the performance planning and monitoring, for establishing the threshold reached and estimating performance. Controls must allow evaluating the adaptation level of major functions to the event-specific demands, the development stage of motor qualities and the technicality level. That is why they are in conformity with the effort specificity in the respective event, with the individual particularities related to age and gender, as well as with the motor structures characteristic to technical gesture. Starting from the hypothesis that, under certain conditions, the results obtained in the trials have relevant prediction power, there have been tested 18 male and female athletes, discus and javelin throwers. For all trials, the coefficients of correlation with the athletic discipline were calculated, the measurands were labelled and the graphs were interpreted. The research has revealed a divided sample of athletes, the fact that some trials correlate with one another, while others correlate with the competitive results, and that the progress rate is relatively constant for the changes in labelling. The final conclusion is that a small part of the trials imposed by the Romanian Athletics Federation are significant and provide information which argues an acceptable prediction of the results in the oncoming competition. In an antithesis, most of the trials have a very weak power of predicting the competitive results immediately after their application. © 2016 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.uk