A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THROWING SPEED BETWEEN HEAVIER AND LIGHTER CATEGORIES IN JUDO.
Ramdane Almansba - r.almansba@yahoo.fr
Laboratory of Sport and Health, Faculty of Sciences Sport and Physical Education, France.
The aim of this work was to verify if there was a difference in throwing speed performance between heavier and lighter weight categories in judo. Sixteen judoists aged 18±3 years-old, eight considered in the light weight category (-73 kg) and eight considered in the heavy weight category (+73 kg) participated in the study. A force/velocity test was used to determine the anaerobic power, strength, and pedal speed for each subject. Three trials of Nage-komi exercise, each comprised of 15s sets of Osoto-gari, Uchi-mata and Ippon-seoi-nage throws were performed by each subject to ascertain throwing speed. Throws within the sets were intersected by one period of 3 minute passive rest while the trials were separated by one period of 10 minute passive rest. Heart rate and the greatest number of throws within each set were measured for three trials.
We used an ANOVA to compare the number of throws between the two weight categories and a "Student" test when the difference was significant. A correlation was used to examine the link between the different parameters.
Results show that in the force/velocity test pedal speed did not differ between the two categories. However, there was a significant difference between the two categories when throwing speed was measured by the number of throws executed during the Ippon-seoi-nage and Uchi-mata, but there was no significant difference between the two categories for Osoto-gari.
Our study showed that the throwing speed of judoists represented by number of throws appears to be significantly different between the two categories. The lighter category has more speed than the heavier category using arm technique (Ippon-seoi-nage), while the heavier category has more speed using leg technique with half turn of the attacker's body (Uchi-mata). As a result, throwing speed is related to the type of technique used and not weight category.
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