Honors Program

University Honors

Date of Award

8-2010

Thesis Professor(s)

Sato Kimitake

Thesis Professor Department

Kinesiology, Leisure and Sport Sciences

Thesis Reader(s)

Mike Ramsey, Brad DeWeese

Abstract

ABSTRACT

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHYSICAL FACTORS TO AGILITY PERFORMANCE IN COLLEGIATE TENNIS PLAYERS

Ian McKinley and Dr. Kimitake Sato, Department of Exercise and Sport Sciences, College of Education, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee

Tennis players change direction numerous times within a tennis match and game making agility an important skill for them to possess. The purpose of this study was to investigate at the significance of physical factors as they relate to agility performance in collegiate tennis players. The physical factors looked at were anthropomorphic measurements; isometric peak force, rate of force development, and force scale; countermovement jump performance, and squat jump performance. The participants were seventeen (Male: N = 8, Female: N=9) NCAA Division I collegiate level tennis players. Anthropomorphic measurements included height, body mass, and body fat percentages were also considered. Strength was measured by an isometric mid-thigh pull, and lastly power was measured by vertical jumps. Significance was set at 0.05 for statistical analysis. Correlation analysis showed that isometric rate of force development from isometric mid-thigh pull was significant (p = 0.033). In conclusion both anthropomorphic measurements and vertical jumps have little effect on agility performance but the rate of force development in the isometric mid-thigh pull test has statistically significant relationship to agility performance in tennis players, indicating agility movement is influenced by how fast you can develop force against ground.

Document Type

Honors Thesis - Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

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