Abstract
[Truncated abstract] Our understanding of agility has evolved to now recognise that agility manoeuvres in open play invasion sports, such as Australian football, are commonly reactive in nature, whereby they usually occur in response to sportspecific external stimuli, such as opponent or ball movement. Notwithstanding this, much of what is known about agility and the characteristics of agile athletes is still based on information from historical studies using pre-planned tests. However, these pre-planned agility tests now have questionable validity since they lack the perceptual and decision making component fundamental to contemporary reactive agility tasks. Consequently, several new reactive agility tests, incorporating numerous stimuli, such as flashing lights, arrows or video’s of opponents, have been developed to investigate the specific characteristics involved in reactive agility. Nevertheless, numerous unanswered questions remain, including which type of stimuli may be best suited to examining reactive agility, the impact of complex multi-turn agility tasks or the role of muscular strength in reactiveagility performance.
With this in mind, the initial aim of this project was to develop a videobased reactive agility test for Australian football, using a number of guiding principles based on the particular movement qualities of Australian football, combined with the underpinning philosophies of modern reactive agility theory (Chapter 3). However, before this new protocol could be used more broadly to investigate reactive agility, its validity and reliability had to be established (Chapters 4 and 4A). Subsequently, this new protocol was used to investigate, for the first time, other aspects of sport-specific reactive agility, such as the impact of offensive feints on the performance of a defensive player (Chapters 5 and 6) and the role of lower extremity reactive strength in reactive agility performance (Chapter 7).
With this in mind, the initial aim of this project was to develop a videobased reactive agility test for Australian football, using a number of guiding principles based on the particular movement qualities of Australian football, combined with the underpinning philosophies of modern reactive agility theory (Chapter 3). However, before this new protocol could be used more broadly to investigate reactive agility, its validity and reliability had to be established (Chapters 4 and 4A). Subsequently, this new protocol was used to investigate, for the first time, other aspects of sport-specific reactive agility, such as the impact of offensive feints on the performance of a defensive player (Chapters 5 and 6) and the role of lower extremity reactive strength in reactive agility performance (Chapter 7).
Original language | English |
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Qualification | Doctor of Philosophy |
Publication status | Unpublished - 2013 |