Impact and Role of Selected Coordinative Abilities in Racket Sports

Performance sports aim at high sports performances and for that the physical and psychic capacities of sportsmen are developed to extreme limits. This normally does not happen in other areas of human activity. In past five motor abilities were recognized as components of physical fitness. These were strength, endurance, speed, flexibility and agility. But since one and a half decade the term agility has been gradually replaced by the term co-coordinative abilities (Martin 1979, Matweyew 1981, Hirtz 1985, Harre 1986, Meinel and Schnabel 1987). It was increasingly felt that if the concept of agility can be discarded and replaced by the concept of co-ordinative abilities, it will be more scientific and practical and this will help in clearing the confusion. Blume (1978) in his path breaking effort suggested that in place of agility there should be seven coordinative abilities which are important in sports. For the purpose of this study a total of 40 male students (20 each from Badminton and Table Tennis) were selected from Lakshmibai National Institute of Physical Education, Gwalior. All the selected subjects were University level players. The purposive sampling method was adopted to select the subjects for the study. All the subjects were in the age category of 18-25 years. The data was collected by administering various coordinative abilities test as suggested by Peter Hirtz. All the five tests were administered to 40 subjects from Badminton and Table Tennis. After the completion of the coordinative abilities test, the subjects were tested on their specific playing abilities tests for Badminton and Table Tennis, subjective judgment by a panel of experts in the respective area of specialization. In order to find out the relationship of Coordinative Abilities to Playing Abilities in Badminton and Table Tennis, Spearmans Rank correlation was employed. The objective of the study was to investigate the relationship of Coordinative Abilities to Playing Ability in Racquet Sports. The level of significance was set at 0.05. There was a significant relationship of Reaction Ability with the Badminton Playing Ability. Whereas insignificant relationship in case of Differentiation, Orientation, Balance and Rhythm Coordinative Abilities with Badminton Playing Ability. There was a significant relationship of Reaction and Differentiation Abilities with the Table Tennis Playing Ability, while there was no significant relationship in case of Orientation, Balance and Rhythm Abilities with Table Tennis Playing Ability.