Post‐exercise coincidence anticipation in expert and novice Gaelic games players: the effects of exercise intensity

Abstract

Within the current scientific literature, there is a distinct lack of empirical data examining the effects of exercise intensity on\ud coincidence anticipation and, to date, no study has examined this in Gaelic games. Furthermore, many previous studies failed to consider fully sport specificity. The aims of this study were to examine the effect of moderate- and high-intensity\ud exercise on coincidence anticipation and to determine whether post-exercise changes in coincidence anticipation were the same in novice and expert Gaelic games players (hurlers).\ud Eleven expert and nine novice hurlers participated in this study. After familiarization, coincidence anticipation was\ud measured using the Bassin Anticipation Timer at rest, following moderate- and high-intensity exercise. Exercise intensities were set using an incremental running protocol until the participants reached steady-state 70% and 90% heart rate reserve.\ud To simulate hitting a ball, participants swung or ‘‘pulled’’ using a continuous swing at full speed with a standard hurley through a photoelectric beam as close to the actual arrival time of the stimulus at the target location as possible. Immediately following each exercise condition, participants performed 20 anticipation trials. All testing was randomized and\ud counterbalanced. Raw scores were transformed to three error scores constant error, absolute error, and log variable error. The effect of\ud exercise intensity on constant error, absolute error, and log variable error was analysed using separate 3 (exercise intensities) 20 (trials) 2 (levels of skill) repeated-measures analyses of variance. The results showed no between- or\ud within-group differences for constant error (P 0.05). For both absolute error and log variable error there were highly significant between-group differences (both PB0.01), which indicated that the expert hurlers at all exercise intensities\ud exhibited significantly better coincidence anticipation than novice players probably due to experience among other factors. Further within-group analyses showed no differences in the expert players’ performance across exercise intensities. However, within-group analyses on the novice players’ data showed a significant difference between performance at rest and\ud performance following moderate-intensity exercise. The results suggest that expert players are capable of maintaining coincidence anticipation performance across exercise intensities but the novice players performed optimally following moderate-intensity exercise

Visual anticipation time differences between athletes in open and closed skills sports

“…A considerable amount of literature has been published on age (Benguigui & Ripoll, 1998;Vanttinen, Blomqvist, Luhtanen, & Hakkinen, 2010), gender (Millslagle, 2004;Sanders & Sinclair, 2011), skill levels (Lyons, Al-Nakeeb, & Nevill, 2008;Tenenbaum, Sar-El, & Bar-Eli, 2000), and sports type (Ak & Koçak, 2010;Akpinar, Devrilmez, & Kirazci, 2012), however literatures is still lacking in relation of VAT to the sporting environment. Researchers found higher accuracy and consistency in anticipation ability depending on the sports involved.…”

Functional performance comparison between real and virtual tasks in older adults

“…CE, which is error resulting from a directional trend, [ 35 ] is the temporal interval (in milliseconds) between the arrival of the visual stimulus and the end of the participant's motor response. [ 36 ] The calculation was done by the simple arithmetic average of the error values, considering the algebraic sign (negative or positive) in a series of attempts (block of trials). It represents the direction of error if it is late or early.…”

“…[ 35 ] It was calculated by taking the absolute value of each raw score, disregarding whether the response was early or late. [ 36 ] VE is the error resulting from within-subject variability. [ 35 ] It represents the consistency in a group of responses and is independent of the proximity of each trial to the designated target.…”

Strength and Conditioning Considerations for Hurling: An Amateur Gaelic Games Sport

“…Research has revealed the height of the average player ranges between 177-182 cm and weight ranging from 78.5-89.5 kg (10,30,31,32,33,34,35,36). The rationale for measuring an athlete's body composition is to regulate body fat and encourage weight management to maximise performance (13).…”