Tomislav Rupčić

Comparison of standard and newer balance tests in recreational alpine skiers and ski novices

Collaborative learning has been shown to be a useful tool for improving several social skills in students; however, it is very diffi cult to set up the initial conditions that guarantee its eff ectiveness. Since group projects are made for students and, most importantly, by students, we should not forget to take their opinions based on previous experience into consideration, which might increase the effi ciency of their own learning. Th erefore, the aim of the study was to investigate what secondary school students learn from and think about group projects in Physical Education. A total of 94 secondary school students (46 girls and 48 boys) participated in the study carried out in the 2015/2016 school year. Th e participants were given the assignment to create a video exercise, which they were working on in small groups in PE. A questionnaire was designed to investigate students’ learning outcomes, participation, evaluation, and attitudes towards the project. Diff erences for selected categorical variables were determined using the Chi-square test. Th e majority of the students reported improvement in selected social skills and better relationships with their teammates. In addition, several signifi cant diff erences in students’ opinions with respect to age and gender were found.Alpine skiers should physically prepare for skiing due to the specifi c body movements it requires. As balance is essential for the success of competitive alpine skiers, we investigated its importance during preparation for alpine skiing in recreational skiers. We included 24 male participants ; twelve recreational skiers just aft er 10 days of alpine skiing, and twelve alpine ski novices. All participants were tested with two balance tests (BAL40 and GYKO). Participants of the two groups did not diff er signifi cantly in the results of the BAL40 standard balance test. In contrast, we found signifi cant diff erences in four out of six variables measured with the GYKO test performed on BOSU trainer during the two-feet stand. Participants specifi cally diff ered in the variables overall average body tilt (p=0.02), overall average deviation of body tilt (p=0.00), overall medio-lateral average body tilt (p=0.01), and overall medio- lateral average deviation of body tilt (0.00). Average results were lower for participants of the group of recreational skiers than for participants of the novice alpine ski group, suggesting that balance is important for recreational skiers, either as an acquired trait during skiing, or the result of conditioning training in the preparation period for skiing. According to the results, we would advise recreational skiers as well as people planning to be involved in alpine skiing as a new recreational activity to include balance exercises in the preparation period.