Associate professor, Ph.D. I.I. Taran
Postgraduate student M.N. Popovskaya
S. Silant'ev
Velikie Luki State Academy of Physical Culture and Sport, Velikie Luki

Keywords: psychophysiological profile, basketball player, player position.

Introduction. Assigning player positions or roles to the players is one of the key playing principles in basketball. Every player position implies certain requirements to specific individual qualities and skills of the player [1]. These sets of individual qualities and skills required to qualify for the player position have evolved to fairly concrete and invariable forms [3]. And it is a matter of general knowledge today that the functional condition of the nervous system and its individual parameters should be considered as a prime basis for any form of motor activity in sports [4].

The available literature gives some background data on the psychophysiological profiles and individual qualities differentiated by the athletes’ qualifications and player positions [1; 2]. These works and data, however, are quite fragmentary in fact and this is the reason for the growing demand for broader integrated studies of psychophysiological profiles required by different basketball player positions in the modern sport science, as this knowledge could be indispensable in supporting the athletes’ qualification process and in modelling the ideal profiles for their game roles.

With these ideas in mind, we have undertaken this study with the objective to explore the psychophysiological profiles of skilled basketball players holding different player positions.

Materials and methods. We have sampled for the study 34 basketball players of 18 to 25 year of age from the best (Top 10) university basketball teams playing in the Top Division of the Student Basketball Association, each of the sampled athletes being ranked at least 1 Class Master and up to Candidate for Master of Sport.

The individual neurodynamic indicators and processes of the athletes were tested using the Computerized “NS PsychoTest” System made by Neurosoft Ltd., Russia, 2008. The testes were designed based on the following psychophysiological techniques: Simple Visual-Motor Reaction (SVMR); Choice Reaction (CR); Reaction to a Moving Object (RMO) and the Tapping Test (TT). We have further applied the additional set of indicators offered by T.D. Loskutova to assess the current state of the central nervous system (CNS), including the following: Functionality Level of the System (FLS), Reaction Stability (RS) and Functional Capacity Level (FCL).

We have also made an attempt in the study to assess the willpowers of tested basketball players based on records of their skeletal shin muscle biopotentials when the maximum isometric force was applied. We were governed in these assessments by the Y.I. Ignatiev’s findings where he affirms that the dynamo-graphic records of the maximum-force muscular contraction indicators may be used to assess some specific features of the nervous system [5]. The tested athletes were asked to apply their maximum isometric muscular force 3 times in a row with five-minute breaks in between the tests; and the study team recorded the 90% rate of the maximum force achieved. Then the tested athlete was asked to apply and keep the 90% force as long as possible till natural refusal, with the muscular electric activity indices being recorded in the process. In addition, the force application times and the electric activity variations with time were recorded.

Our comparative analysis of the test data was structured depending on the players’ classification by the 5 standard player positions, and the skeletal shin muscle biopotential assessments and analysis were made for the player positions of point guards and centers.

Results and discussion. The findings gives grounds to find some correlations in the psychophysiological profiles of the players and their game roles on the basketball court.

We have found the following variations of the SVMR and CR indicators classified by the player positions (Table 1).

Table 1. Average group SVMR and CR indicators classified by player positions

The shooting guards showed the reliably higher speeds of the simple sensorimotor reactions than the small forwards (р≤0.05). The centers in their turn showed the reliably higher speeds of complex sensorimotor reactions than the shooting guards (р≤0.05). Both the shooting guards and point guards made not as many errors in the choice reaction tests as the power forwards, and the difference is reliable (р≤0.05).

The tests have further indicated that all the tested players of whatever player position showed the medium-level functions of the central nervous system. However, this indicator for the guards and forwards was close to the upper limit (4.9), whilst that for the centers was close to the bottom limit of the normal values (4.4). The point guards showed the higher reaction stability indicators compared to the other player positions showing average SR indices, although it should be noted that the SR indices for the centers were again quite close to the bottom limit of the normal values. Generally the latter criteria are viewed as indicative of the stability and sustainability of the current functions of the CNS. As mentioned above, all the tested players of whatever player position showed the medium-level functionality of the central nervous system, although the shooting guards and point guards showed relatively higher current functional capacities of the CNS that were close to the upper limit of the normal values. High-level FLS, RS and FCL indicators were shown by virtually the same numbers of players irrespective of their actual player positions.

The test data generated by the complex sensorimotor reaction tests are indicative of the following: the reaction precision indicators of the point guards were reliably higher than that of the shooting guards (р≤0.05). The shooting guards showed the early reaction indicators reliably different from that of the point guards (р≤0.05), with the number of the early reactions being significantly higher than the number of delayed reactions (р≤0,05); and this fact is considered indicative of some imbalance of the nervous processes that tend to be dominated by the excitement effects. No further reliably significant intergroup differences could be found in the test data (Table 2).

Table 2. Average group RMO rates for basketball players of different player positions

The Tapping Test data were found to be partially indicative of some correlation between the reactions and the player positions. It is the shooting guards that showed the highest wrist motion rates of 8.48±0.32 Hz; and it were the centers that were the slowest in these tests with their wrist motion rates of 2.73±1.17 Hz.

Our analysis of the Tapping Test data with consideration for the Y.P. Ilyin’s (1972) methodology showed the nervous system typology being indistinct for the test sample of the basketball players; and this situation is not unusual for sport games [6]. The basketball players representative of all the 5 game roles were found to belong to different nervous system types, each of the types having its advantages and drawbacks for the game.

The shooting guards showed three types of nervous reactions as demonstrated by the tests, namely: interim type (60% of the group); week type (20% of the group) and medium type (20% of the shooting guards tested). As far as the point guards are concerned, 40% of them were found to have weak-type nervous system, with the other 40% having an interim-type NS; and the balance of 20% - medium type NS. The basketball players holding small forward positions were broken down by the NS types as follows: 50% medium-type NS and 50% weak-type NS. The tested power forwards were found to have nervous systems of the three following types: 40% accounted for the interim type NS, 40% for the weak-type NS and 20% for the medium-type NS. The centers were the most variable in the NS types with 50% of the group being rated with the weak-type NS and the rest of the sample broken down into three virtually equal groups of roughly 17% having the medium-, strong- and interim-type NS.

As demonstrated by different authors, relative drawbacks of the nervous system functionality are normally offset in the actual game activity by other positive individual qualities dominated by the willpower effects.

As things now stand, modern sport scientists show growing interest to the willpower effects in sports. It should be noted in this context that the existing objective methods and criteria applied to assess the athletes’ willpowers appear to be insufficient. We assumed in the study that the athlete’s ability to keep and stand the isometric muscular stress as verified by the relevant electromyogram (EMG) data records may provide an objective evidence of his/her willpower. Our tests of the skeletal muscle shin biopotentials have shown that the centers had higher EMG variations (538.5±33.04mKV) in all the 3 tests than the point guards (338±139.43mKV), and this fact may be indicative of the different motor units being involved in the action. The differences were found to be reliable as demonstrated by all the tests (р≤0.05). The EMG data records during the stress endurance times with adjustments for the athletes’ weights gives reasons to assess the willpowers mobilized in the test.

Conclusions. Summarizing the above, we should acknowledge that the tests have found no expressed differences in the psychophysiological profiles of the tested basketball players holding different player positions; and this fact may be explained by the versatility of the game roles in the modern sports in general and the popular sport games in particular since they are subject to regulatory limits on the certain-level players for the certain player positions. The tests have shown reliable differences of a few NS functioning criteria for the players holding different player positions. The differences detected may be explained, on the one hand, by the specific qualities of the nervous system that determine the player’s preference in taking one or another game role; and on the other hand, they may be attributed to the cumulative effect of the training and competitive processes that tend to improve the neurodynamic processes with age. The study data indicative of the psychophysiological profiles of the basketball players holding different player positions may be helpful for the individually differentiated approaches pursued by sport practitioners and for the education and training processes.

Modern sport scientists show growing interest to the willpower effects in sport. It should be noted in this context that the existing objective methods and criteria applied for the athletes’ willpower assessment are unlikely sufficient enough today. We believe that the electromyogram (EMG) data records may provide a set of objective criteria for the willpower assessments and we are going to focus on this subject in our further studies.

References

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Corresponding author: gorodnichev@vlgafc.ru