The influence of jumping performance and coordination on the spike ability of young volleyball athletes

Abstract

Background and Study Aim. Spike is the most important techniques to be mastered due to its big impacts to volleyball match. There is still lack of study to evaluate and discusses how the role of jumping performance and coordination in volleyball could affect spike ability. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of these variables on spike ability. Material and Methods. This study used a quantitative descriptive method, involved 42 participants (20 men and 22 women). The jump performance was measured using MyJump 2 application which can measure flight time, force, jump height, jumping power and speed based on free-arm jumping method. Then, the measurement of coordination was done using an alternative hand wall test. Spike ability is shown by the results of the hit and spike performance. Spike performance was based on The Volleyball Test Skills for Smasher. For spike performance, data collection is based on observations from five phases of spike movement; i) Initial posture; ii) Initial Motion; iii) Motion of Appeal; iv) Advanced Motion; v) Placement of the ball, using the scoring points 1-4. All the data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson Correlation.  Results. The results of the study show that in the perspective of gender differences, almost all variables had significant difference between men and women on flight time (0.028 < 0.05), force (0.001 < 0.01), jump height (0.040 < 0). 0.05), strength (0.001 < 0.01), and speed (0.028 < 0.05), coupled with coordination (0.003 < 0.01), hit results (0.181 > 0.05), and spike performance (0.216 > 0.05). Meanwhile, the relationship between variables were found to be significant (p-value < 0.01) on the five jumping performance variables. Another significant correlation obtained from the results of calculations between coordination and jump height (0.033 < 0.05), coordination with strength (0.044 < 0.05), coordination with spike hitting results was significant (0.003 < 0.01). Instead of them, relationship between one and another was not found significant relationship (p-value > 0.05). Conclusions. Coaches can use the information in this study as a guideline to develop training program to improve their athletes effectiveness in spiking.