Search Results (3)

This study aimed to analyze the relationship between ball impact point, type of stroke, and shot direction in high-performance padel. A total of 8363 strokes from nine matches of three national tournaments involving a total of 24 male players were subjected to systematic observation. The variables analyzed were type of stroke, shot direction, and ball impact. A descriptive analysis was conducted for each study variable, with a comparison of the variables performed using Pearson’s Chi-Square test, column proportions determined using a Z test according to Bonferroni (p < 0.05), an association established by corrected standardized residuals, and an effect size calculated using Crammer’s V. The results showed that the most-used stroke types were volleys, serves, groundstrokes, and backwall shots (67.6%). The cross-court direction stood out over down-the-line and inside-out directions. Finally, almost two-thirds of the impact point locations were forward. In addition, the type of stroke determined shot direction and ball impact location. Moreover, the ball’s impact location significantly determined shot direction. In conclusion, these results suggest that the ball impact location and the type of stroke provide information from which padel shot direction can be anticipated. Such knowledge may constitute a very important factor affecting performance and success among padel players. Full article

The aim of this study was to compare the kinematic and kinetic differences of the racket arm when balls were hit cross-court (CC) and down the line (DL) by topspin backhand. Eight elite female players participated and were instructed to hit the ball down the line and cross-court using a topspin backhand. Kinematic and kinetic data were collected. The results show that at the impact, participants had a greater wrist flexion angle in DL than CC (p = 0.017). The angular velocity of shoulder flexion (p = 0.038), shoulder abduction (p = 0.006) and thorax–pelvis internal rotation (p = 0.017) was faster when participants impacted the ball DL than CC. As for the joint kinetics, the shoulder external rotation moment was greater in CC than DL (p = 0.043). For a high-quality DL technique, it is important to exhibit a greater wrist flexion and have faster adduction and flexion in the shoulder, as well as faster internal rotation in thorax–pelvis, while having a smaller wrist flexion and more external rotation power in the shoulder are important to perform a CC at the impact. If these key and different factors of hitting CC and DL are ignored, it may lead to failure to complete a high-quality shot. Full article

To program proper reactions, athletes must anticipate opponents’ actions on the basis of previous visuomotor experience. In particular, such abilities seem to rely on processing others’ intentions to act. We adopted a new approach based on an attentional spatial compatibility paradigm to investigate how elite volleyball players elaborate both spatial and motor information at upper-limb posture presentation. Forty-two participants (18 volleyball players and 17 nonathlete controls assigned to Experiments 1 a and b, and eight basketball players assigned to Experiment 2) were tested to study their ability to process the intentions to act conveyed by hands and extract motor primitives (i.e., significant components of body movements). Analysis looked for a spatial compatibility effect between direction of the spike action (correspondence factor) and response side for both palm and back of the hand (view factor). We demonstrated that volleyball players encoded spatial sport-related indices from bodily information and showed preparatory motor activation according to the direction of the implied spike actions for the palm view (Experiment 1; hand simulating a cross-court spike, p = 0.013, and a down-the-line spike, p = 0.026) but both nonathlete controls (Experiment 1; both p < 0.05) and other sports athletes (basketball players, Experiment 2; p = 0.34, only cross-court spike) did not. Results confirm that elite players’ supremacy lies in the predictive abilities of coding elementary motor primitives for their sport discipline. Full article