Reliability of the newly developed tests of handball specific change of direction speed and reactive agility

Agility is an important factor of success in handball. There is a lack of reliable specific tests for the evaluation of different agility components in handball. In this study, we evaluated the reliability of the two newly developed tests of agility for handball. The sample consisted of 6 senior male amateur handball players (age: 19,83 years) who were tested on anthropometrics (body height: 185,5 cm, body mass: 84 kg), newly developed tests of handball specific reactive agility (HS-RAGL), and change of direction speed (HS-CODSL). The relative reliability is evaluated by calculation of Intra-Class-Correlation coefficients (ICC), while the absolute reliability was evaluated by calculation of the coefficient of variation (CV). Further, systematic bias was checked by analysis of variance for repeated measurements (ANOVA). The associations between studied variables were evidenced by Pearson’s correlation. The reliability statistic for HS-CODSL L and HS-RAGL L are shown in table 1. CA ranges from 0.92 to 0.95, IIR is 0.88, and CV ranges from 7.27% to 8.24%, while in HS-CODSL and HS-RAGL CA ranges from 0.91 to 0.93, IIR ranges from 0.78 to 0.80, and CV ranges from 7.98% to 8.75%. Correlation analysis of the HS-CODSL test performance on the left and right side (three trials), identified a statistically significant correlation between; (i) HS-CODSL D1 and HS-CODSL L2 (R=0.97, p<0.05) (ii) HS-CODSL D1 and HS-CODSL D2 (R=0.84, p<0.05), (iii) HS-CODSL D1 and HS-CODSL L3 (R= 0.94, p<0.05), (iv) HS-CODSL D1 and HS-CODSL D3 (R=0.85, p<0.05), (v) HS-CODSL L2 and HS-CODSL L3 (R= 0.98, p<0.05), (vi) HS-CODSL L2 and HS-CODSL D3 (R=0.83, p<0.05). While the correlation analysis of the HS-RAGL test performance on the left and right side (three trials), identified a statistically significant correlation between almost all test performances, and the most significant correlation coefficient was found between; (i) HS-RAGL L1 and HS-RAGL D1 (R=0.97, p<0.05) (ii) HS-RAGL L1 and HS-RAGL D2 (R=0.96, p<0.05), (iii) HS-RAGL D1 and HS-RAGL L2 (R= 0.95, p<0.05). Results showed appropriate reliability of the newly developed tests of handball specific change of direction speed and reactive agility. Therefore, here proposed H-CODS and H-RAG can be used as reliable measures of agility components in handball. Further studies should evaluate the discriminative validity of the here proposed tests (i.e. identification of position-specific or performance-related differences), as well as reliability in different handball categories than those studied herein.