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  • Differences between the winning and the losing side in a game in terms of the distance covered during squash matches
    Vučković, Goran, 1969- ...
    The typical characteristics of squash are a high velocity of the ball on a relatively small court and very rapid returns of the ball during a rally, which makes this game extremely dynamic. All this ... affects playersć movements and their external loading during the match. A thorough examination of sportsman's loading is highly important in view of the training activity. Such information provides an essential basis for adequate planning and dosing of loading during trainings, which indirectly improves the efficacy of the training process. The external loading of players during a match of squash wa smostly dealt with by Hughes and Franks, 1994, Ergonomics, 37(1), 23-29. In his research Hughes, 1998, Science and Racket Sports II, London 227-234 established that the average length of movement of the top-club squash players during a rally was 12 metres. Regretfully, none of the above researches revealed any information on the total distance covered by the player during a game or throughout the match. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to measure the distance covered by squash players and establish whether there are any the statistically significant differences between the winning and the losing side in a game. The sample consisted of eight top-ranked Slovene, Austrian and Bavarian squashplayers, who played six matches. All matches were recorded by a fixed SVHS video camera (Ultrak CCD Color KC 7501 CP), with the frequency of capturing input pictures of 25 Hy. The video camera was fixed to the ceiling at the centre of the squash court and calibrated, it did not interfere with the play and could not be hit by the ball. The video-recordings were digitized using the miro Video DC30+ (Germany) video digitizer hardware with the resolution of 384x576 at 2 MB/sec data rate, while the processing was carried out at a resolution of 384x288 pixels. Digital images were processed by the SAGIT/SQUASH computer vision based tracking system (Pers et al., 2001, ISPA 2001, Proceedings of the 2nd international symposium on image and signal processing and analysis in conjunction with 23nd int'l conference on information technology interfaces, Pula, Croatia, 362-365). The testing of statistically relevant differences between the winning and the losing sides in a game in terms of covered distance was based on the t-test for independent samples. In this research the longest distance covered was 1449 m and the shortest only 254 m. According to the results the players cover a 1,000 m distance in about 13 minutes. The comparison between the wining and the losing sides in a game shows that the winners run greater distances, but these differences are not statistically significant. First and foremost, our research concluded that there were no statistically significant differences between the winning and the losing side in a game of squash in terms of the applied indicators. These results are somewhat surprising, as the theory led us to believe that the losing side covers greater distances than the winning one. Such results may stem from the fact that the winning side makes more services and winning returns than the losing one. Last but not least, in the future it would be reasonable to examine these indicators of playersć loading by rally and to classify the winners and the losers after shorter completed periods (individual rally).
    Source: Programme and abstracts : les entretiens de l'INSEP (Str. 95)
    Type of material - conference contribution ; adult, serious
    Publish date - 2003
    Language - english
    COBISS.SI-ID - 1769905

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