Abstract

GONZALEZ DE LOS REYES, Yennys. VALIDITY, RELIABILITY AND SPECIFITY OF AGILITY TESTS. rev.udcaactual.divulg.cient. [online]. 2008, vol.11, n.2, pp.31-39. ISSN 0123-4226.

Sportsmen of intermittent activities require, within the competition, to persecute or to elude opponents and to respond to movements with changes of speed and direction of a variety of stimuli, in a fast, precise and effective form. The intention of this study was to analyze the validity, reliability and specificity of agility tests and its relation to speed. In addition, factors of laterality and the corporal mass index were analyzed. Participated 41 students of the Universidad de Ciencias Aplicadas y Ambientales U.D.C.A, 17 soccer players, 10 voleibol players and 14 students of the faculty of Sport Sciences. All were anthropometrically valued and three tests of agility were applied: race of obstacles (general), T-test (volleyball), Buttifant (soccer) and 30m speed. The agility tests were made from right and left. Each group made a post-test of the specific one. Among the results we emphasize that the only valid agility test was the Buttifant, since it presented speed independence (r=0.42), showing that the tests validity depends on the concept of agility and the characteristics of each sport. The reliability of the test was very high for obstacles and Buttifant (r>0.90), but not acceptable for T-test (r=0.79). The present study demonstrated that the Buttifant test is more specific for soccer players, the T-test for volleyball players, and the obstacles test nonspecific. In addition, the corporal mass index did discriminate between the groups (n.s=p<0.05) and laterality influence was not established due to the absence of significative differences.

Keywords : Agility; test; sport; direction change speed; training.

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