Javier Sampedro Molinuevo

Differences between international men’s and women’s teams in the strategic action of the penalty corner in field hockey

The penalty corner is one of the strategic actions that determine the result in a match in field hockey. In that investigation we want to show if differences exist between international men’s and women’s teams in the development of this strategy when it is successful. We propose the following aims in our study: to see if a relationship exists between gender and the following variables: used skill, number of players who intervene, number of passes, zone of shot and direction of the sucessful shot at the goal in the penalty corner. The sample is formed by 59 games of international level of top level female (n=21) and male (n=38). In these games 128 penalty corners that finished in goals were registered. We used the data base notational “OBANGOFH” for the capture of information. The analysis of the data was carried out through crosstabs, and Chi-square (p<0,05), where the statistical SPSS package was used. The results obtained in this study determine that the action of the goal in the penalty corner, suggests significant differences between men and women, in the skill of use, the number of players who intervene, the number of passes and the zone of shot.

PERCEPTUAL VISUAL SKILLS IN YOUNG HIGHLY SKILLED BASKETBALL PLAYERS

A simple method was designed to evaluate visual abilities such as distance visual acuity, binocular horizontal visual field, simple and choice visual reaction times, and stereoscopic vision in skilled 11- to 13-yr.-old basketball players participating in a 15-day summer training camp. On a test battery, visual abilities were monitored in 473 players of the Spanish Basketball Federation over a 5-yr. period. The players showed outstanding scores on distance visual acuity and stereoscopic vision, and good visual reaction times and horizontal visual fields. When scores were compared by sex and age, significant differences on certain visual measures were observed. Many players showed crossed eye-hand dominance. Visual screening programs may help promote visual health among junior basketball players and could be used for performance training.

Modeling the basin of attraction as a two-dimensional manifold from experimental data: applications to balance in humans.

We present a method of modeling the basin of attraction as a three-dimensional function describing a two-dimensional manifold on which the dynamics of the system evolves from experimental time series data. Our method is based on the density of the data set and uses numerical optimization and data modeling tools. We also show how to obtain analytic curves that describe both the contours and the boundary of the basin. Our method is applied to the problem of regaining balance after perturbation from quiet vertical stance using data of an elite athlete. Our method goes beyond the statistical description of the experimental data, providing a function that describes the shape of the basin of attraction. To test its robustness, our method has also been applied to two different data sets of a second subject and no significant differences were found between the contours of the calculated basin of attraction for the different data sets. The proposed method has many uses in a wide variety of areas, not just human balance for which there are many applications in medicine, rehabilitation, and sport.