Association between body composition, physical activity level and Illinois agility test performance in young males and females

Abstract

Background and Study Aim. Agility performance, which is a skill related to fast change of direction, explosiveness, and quickness, is a vital performance component for team sports. Illuminating factors that affect agility is substantial to understand the ability requirements and improve. This study aims to investigate correlations of the body analyze parameters and agility performance.
 Material and Methods. One hundred twenty three young participants (93 male, 30 female) were included in this research. Height, weight, fat (%), fat (kg), fat-free mass (FFM), muscle mass, total body water (TBW, kg, and %), bone mass, basal metabolic rate (BMR), metabolic age, visceral rating, and body mass index (BMI) measured for all participants. Illinois Agility Test (IAT) was used to analyze agility performance. A questionnaire including questions about the physical activity level of participants was applied to all participants after IAT.
 Results. Results showed that height was a dominant determinant of IAT performance. There were significant positive correlations between height (negative correlation in women), body weight, fat percentage, fat mass, and visceral rating level (p < 0.05). TBW (%) had a negative relation with IAT duration (p < 0.001). There was a statistically significant difference in terms of IAT between the participants who stated their physical activity levels as low, medium and high (p = 0.025*). Increased daily physical activity level and daily step count increased the agility performance (p < 0.05).
 Conclusions. Coaches and athletes should be considered especially body weight, fat (%), hydration status, and daily physical activity level to improve agility performance.

Assessment of Speed and Agility Female Students Using the Illinois Agility Test

“…Agility is primary in sports that integrate activities with very fast leg movements and changes in body position in space, and an athlete who has good agility performs movements much faster and better (Subak et al, 2022). Precisely the curriculum of the Faculty of PES is specific in that it defines different forms of motor manifestation in the structure of the subject of studying different sports.…”

“…As a motor ability, it records a positive development trend until the puberty period, after which stagnation occurs as a result of accelerating changes in growth and development. The maximum effect of the development period is recorded around the age of 25 (Stojiljković 2003;Demirhan et al, 2017).…”

“…These are mainly parameters that are subordinated to high-quality levels of agonisticsynergistic regulation of the muscle system (Young et al, 2006). Subak et al (2022) suggest that efficiency in repeated sprint speed, explosiveness, speed, change of direction to different stimuli is the main success factor in field sports. Today, it is an unwritten rule that players, mostly in team sports, must have the motoric and technical ability to move in multiple directions on a limited space with the dimensions of the field (Bloomfield et al, 2007), which always includes the ability to perceptual reasoning and most often change the direction of movement (Brughelii et al, 2007;Acar et al, 2019).…”

Evaluation of a body height and weight harmony among university students

“…Introduction 1 A body height and a bogy weight are two most important and popular kinesiology parameters of a human body regarding Physical Education and family areas of human movements like Physical Therapy, Ergo Therapy, Para-Medical Rehabilitation, Sports, and others. A harmony between these two parameters is one of the most important sign of a right body composition.…”

“…Body Mass Index (BMI) is the most popular model for determination of quality of the body composition. Because a body height is much more conservative parameter than a body weight, for determination of the optimal correlation between these parameters the second one is used usually as a function of the independent body height [1,2].…”