|
|
|
|
JOURNAL
OF
SPORTS SCIENCE &
MEDICINE
|
 |
|
Research
article
|
CONSISTENCY IN ACCELERATION PATTERNS OF FOOTBALL PLAYERS WITH DIFFERENT SKILL LEVELS |
|||||||||
Pinar Arpinar-Avsar1 
and Abdullah Ruhi Soylu2 |
|||||||||
1Ege University, School of Physical Education and Sport, Izmir, Turkey, 2Hacettepe University, School of Medicine, Department of Biophysics, Ankara, Turkey. |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
© Journal of Sports Science and Medicine (2010) 9, 382 - 387 |
|||||||||
|
|
| ABSTRACT | |||
| The aims of the present study were to compare the consistency
in the lower limb acceleration patterns during inside and instep kicks performed
by players with different skill levels, and to investigate the correlation
between subjective rating scores for skill level relative to their kicking
performance and knee acceleration repeatability. Thirteen club-level male
soccer players of ages between 15-16 years participated in this study. Skill
levels of individual players were quantified previously by evaluating shooting
performance as a numerical value ranging from 1 to 10. Further evaluations
were held through tri-axial acceleration data recorded at proximal tibial
tuberosity beneath each patella on the players' knees, in a procedure in
which players were asked to complete four randomly ordered shooting trials
of inside and instep kicks with 2-minute resting intervals. Hence, the mainstream
data used in consistency calculations are in the form 4 by 1200 matrices
(acceleration vs. time) per subject. In order to evaluate the consistency
of acceleration data, the mean of the standard deviations (mSD) were calculated,
and the associated Pearson-r correlation coefficients were incorporated
to obtain mSD vs. skill correlations. As a result, repeatability was found
to increase with skill level at z-axis acceleration for instep kicks only.
However, it is possible to find the most appropriate orientation (for the
two kicks) for meaningful correlations using vector rotations on the 3 orthogonal
acceleration data, and this study shows that, after such suitable vector
rotations, positive repeatability results could also be acquired for the
inside kicks. Key words: Accelerometry, soccer, repeatability, skill level. |
|