Blocking plays an important role for defense in the volleyball competition. Player's excellent skill of blocking prevents the attacks from the opposite team and gets scores as well. The goal of this study was to examine the effects of six-week agility training in preseason on total response time (TRT) for blocking. Seven professional male volleyball players were involved in this study, implemented the agility training by using step hurdle and their TRTs of blocking were recorded by using our self-designed system. One-way repeat measure ANOVA and Tukey HSD method were applied to statistically analyze the experimental results. We showed that there were significant differences among the blocking TRTs after six-week training program (p<.05). Significant difference of the TRTs was first observed when the players underwent four-week training (p<.05) and continued to the complement of the six-week training program. There was no difference among the TRTs of the last 3 weeks. The average TRT was improved from 2.05 sec to 1.88 sec. In conclusion, our study demonstrated that the agility training by using step hurdle in preseason can significantly improve the block TRT and should be applied on the regular volleyball practice.
Blocking plays an important role for defense in the volleyball competition. Player's excellent skill of blocking prevents the attacks from the opposite team and gets scores as well. The goal of this study was to examine the effects of six-week agility training in preseason on total response time (TRT) for blocking. Seven professional male volleyball players were involved in this study, implemented the agility training by using step hurdle and their TRTs of blocking were recorded by using our self-designed system. One-way repeat measure ANOVA and Tukey HSD method were applied to statistically analyze the experimental results. We showed that there were significant differences among the blocking TRTs after six-week training program (p<.05). Significant difference of the TRTs was first observed when the players underwent four-week training (p<.05) and continued to the complement of the six-week training program. There was no difference among the TRTs of the last 3 weeks. The average TRT was improved from 2.05 sec to 1.88 sec. In conclusion, our study demonstrated that the agility training by using step hurdle in preseason can significantly improve the block TRT and should be applied on the regular volleyball practice.