Diagnostics of reactive and running agility in young football players

Abstract

Authors in their contribution deal with the issue of reactive and running agility in sport. Upon constructing the methods of research we assumed that players ́ performances in running agility (Illinois test) should increase with the age of soccer players. We expected that we shall not prove this tendency in the level of reaction agility (FAC) with regard to the fact that performance in reaction agility is limited, besides motor, also by other prerequisites such as perception, state of receptors, sensoric and autonomous functions, spinal and supraspinal levels of motor system. We also expected that there wil be no proved relationship between these tests ́ results in any age category. The level of performance in running and reactive agility increases with age; the increase is smooth in running agility and cascaded in reactive agility starting with the 14 yrs. category. We also noted a downward tendency in the correlation between running and reactive agility with increasing age. This decline is most evident from the 14th year of age. The relationship between running and reaction agility was notobserved in the study group from the age of 13. Coaches are recommended to switch over to the specific development of agility using the way of weakening anticipation ability of the player and to replace exercises with closed-loop skills by the ones of open-loop skills.

Keywords

• reactive agility
• running agility
• correlation
• motor tests
• soccer