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The Development of a New Stop'n’go Reactive-Agility Test

2014; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 28; Issue: 11 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1519/jsc.0000000000000515

1533-4287

Damir Sekulić, Ante Krolo, Miodrag Spasić, Ognjen Uljević, Mia Perić,

Quality and Safety in Healthcare

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the reliability and the validity of a newly constructed reactive-agility test that can be used to define the reactive-agility performance in sports that employ repeated scenarios of "stop'n'go" agility. Measuring is done by original hardware based on the ATMEL microcontroller AT89C51RE2. A total of 36 college-aged male athletes (age, 22.1 ± 2.4 years; body height, 182.45 ± 5.19 cm; body mass, 80.67 ± 7.69 kg) and 21 college-aged female athletes (age, 21.4 ± 2.5 years; body height, 171.45 ± 6.81 cm; body mass, 61.95 ± 6.70 kg) were evaluated for a stop'n'go reactive-agility test (SNG-RAT), stop'n'go change of direction speed (SNG-CODS), countermovement jump, and anthropometrics. The reliability analyses suggested a high consistency for the applied tests (SNG-CODS, intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] = 0.87 and 0.92; SNG-RAT, ICC = 0.81 and 0.86, for men and women, respectively). The SNG-RAT and SNG-CODS shared <40% of the common variance. The longer version of the SNG-RAT, which included 5 unpredictable changes of direction, was found to be valid among men. At the same time, the shorter version of the SNG-RAT (3 unpredictable changes of direction) is suggested for women because it better discriminates more agile from less agile athletes. Because the SNG-RAT and SNG-CODS were performed on the same course, we believe that simultaneously performing both tests can be beneficial when defining "stop'n'go" agility. This implies that the calculated SNG-CODS to SNG-RAT ratio will allow strength and conditioning coaches to indirectly determine the perceptual and reaction capacities of their athletes.