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Repeated Dribbling Ability in Young Soccer Players: Reproducibility and Variation by the Competitive Level

2016; De Gruyter Open; Volume: 53; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1515/hukin-2016-0019

1899-7562

João P. Duarte, Óscar M. Tavares, João Valente‐dos‐Santos, Vítor Severino, Alexis Ahmed, Ricardo Rebelo‐Gonçalves, João R. Pereira, Vasco Vaz, Susana Póvoas, André Seabra, Sean P. Cumming, Manuel J. Coelho‐e‐Silva,

Sport Psychology and Performance

Abstract The intermittent nature of match performance in youth soccer supports relevance of ability to repeatedly produce high-intensity actions with short recovery periods. This study was aimed to examine the reproducibility of a repeated dribbling ability protocol and, additionally, to estimate the contribution of concurrent tests to explain inter-individual variability in repeated dribbling output. The total sample comprised 98 players who were assessed as two independent samples: 31 players were assessed twice to examine reliability of the protocol; and 67 juveniles aged 16.1 ± 0.6 years were compared by the competitive level (local, n = 34; national, n = 33) to examine construct validity. All single measurements appeared to be reasonably reliable: total (ICC = 0.924; 95%CI: 0.841 to 0.963); ideal (ICC = 0.913; 95%CI: 0.820 to 0.958); worst (ICC = 0.813; 95%CI: 0.611 to 0.910). In addition, the percentage of the coefficient of variation was below the critical value of 5% for total (%CV = 3.84; TEM = 2.51 s); ideal (%CV = 3.90, TEM = 2.48 s). Comparisons between local and national players suggested magnitude effects as follows: moderate (d-value ranged from 0.63 to 0.89) for all repeated sprint ability scores; large for total (d = 1.87), ideal (d = 1.72), worst (d = 1.28) and moderate for composite scores: the fatigue index (d = 0.69) and the decrement score (d = 0.67). In summary, the dribbling protocol presented reasonable reproducibility properties and output extracted from the protocol seemed to be independent from biological maturation.