One important factor for effective operations in team sports is the team tactical behaviour. Many suggestions about appropriate players' positions in different attack or defence situations have been made. The aims of this study were to develop a classification of offensive and defensive behaviours and to identify team-specific tactical patterns in international women's volleyball. Both the classification and identification of tactical patterns is done by means of a hierarchical cluster analysis. Clusters are formed on the basis of similarities in the players' positions on the court. Time continuous data of the movements, including the start and end points during a pass from the setter, are analysed. Results show team-specific patterns of defensive moves with assessment rates of up to 80%. Furthermore, the recognition of match situations illustrates a clear classification of attack and defence situations and even within different defence conditions (approximately 100%). Thus, this approach to team tactical analysis yields classifications of selected offensive and defensive strategies as well as an identification of tactical patterns of different national teams in standardized situations. The results lead us to question training concepts that assume a team-independent optimal strategy with respect to the players' positions in team sports.
This chapter gives an overview of artificial neural networks as instruments for processing miscellaneous biomedical signals. A variety of applications are illustrated in several areas of healthcare. The structure of this chapter is rather oriented on medical fields like cardiology, gynecology, or neuromuscular control than on types of neural nets. Many examples demonstrate how neural nets can support the diagnosis and prediction of diseases. However, their content does not claim completeness due to the enormous amount and exponentially increasing number of publications in this field. Besides the potential benefits for healthcare, some remarks on underlying assumptions are also included as well as problems which may occur while applying artificial neural nets. It is hoped that this review gives profound insight into strengths as well as weaknesses of artificial neural networks as tools for processing biomedical signals.
Maximal oxygen uptake (VO 2 max) is one of the most distinguished parameters in endurance sports and plays an important role, for instance, in predicting endurance performance. Different models have been used to estimate VO 2 max or performance based on VO 2 max. These models can use linear or nonlinear approaches for modeling endurance performance. The aim of this study was to estimate VO 2 max in healthy adults based on the Queens College Step Test (QCST) as well as the Shuttle Run Test (SRT) and to use these values for linear and nonlinear models in order to predict the performance in a maximal 1000 m run (i.e. the speed in an incremental 4x1000 m Field Test (FT)). 53 female subjects participated in these three tests (QCST, SRT, FT). Maximal oxygen uptake values from QCST and SRT were used as (a) predictor variables in a multiple linear regression (MLR) model and as (b) input variables in a multilayer perceptron (MLP) after scaling in preprocessing. Model output was speed [km·h for MLP. Results showed that the accuracy of the applied MLP was comparable to the MLR, but did not outperform the linear approach.
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