Motor and Gaze Behaviors of Youth Basketball Players Taking Contested and Uncontested Jump Shots

Abstract

In this study, we examined the effects of a defender contesting jump shots on performance and gaze behaviors of basketball players taking jump shots. Thirteen skilled youth basketball players performed 48 shots from about 5 m from the basket; 24 uncontested and 24 contested. The participants wore mobile eye tracking glasses to measure their gaze behavior. As expected, an approaching defender trying to contest the shot led to significant changes in movement execution and gaze behavior including shorter shot execution time, longer jump time, longer ball flight time, later final fixation onset, and longer fixation on the defender. Overall, no effects were found for shooting accuracy. However, the effects on shot accuracy were not similar for all participants: six participants showed worse performance and six participants showed better performance in the contested compared to the uncontested condition. These changes in performance were accompanied by differences in gaze behavior. The participants with worse performance showed shorter absolute and relative final fixation duration and a tendency for an earlier final fixation offset in the contested condition compared to the uncontested condition, whereas gaze behavior of the participants with better performance for contested shots was relatively unaffected. The results confirm that a defender contesting the shot is a relevant constraint for basketball shooting suggesting that representative training designs should also include contested shots, and more generally other constraints that are representative of the actual performance setting such as time or mental pressure.

The Jump Shot Performance in Youth Basketball: A Systematic Review

“…Evidence was synthesized according to the following variables: (i) distance variation to the basket (four studies) [ 16 , 19 , 20 , 21 ]; (ii) fatigue (four studies) [ 15 , 22 , 23 , 24 ]; (iii) presence of a defender (two studies) [ 9 , 25 ]; (iv) visual information available (two studies) [ 12 , 26 ]. One of the documents has reported data on the JS performance both on a defender’s presence and on the players’ gaze behavior (visual information) [ 25 ]. Besides, only two studies have used exclusively female participants, eight studies used male participants, and two studies used participants both boys and girls.…”

“…Two studies have assessed the influence of a defender on the JS [ 9 , 25 ]. In 12 highly skilled male basketball players aged 17.8 ± 1.1 years, the influence of a defender was examined on the performance of several types of shooting [ 9 ].…”

“…In the second study, the effect of the presence of a defender on jump-shooting was evaluated among 13 talented young female basketball players aged 16.8 ± 1.8 years. Authors have assessed the percentage of efficacy, the ball’s trajectory, the total time of shot execution and the gaze behavior during the shot performance as well [ 25 ]. Results showed that the ball trajectory was longer in contested (M = 1027 ± 69 ms) than in uncontested shots (M = 994 ± 55 ms) ( p < 0.01).…”

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“…www.efsupit.ro 993 speed (Nae, & Pop, 2015;van Maarseveen, & Oudejans, 2018), Which binds (with some exceptions) inversely proportional to the strength of the muscle reduction and speed with which this force is manifested in motion: with the decrease of the external resistance, the speed of movement increases, and the muscular power falls (Kozina, Shepelenko, Osiptsov, Kostiukevych, Repko, et al, 2017). There are two components of power in speed-force actions (Kozina, Sobko, Vilvitskii, Xiaofei, Tymko, Glyadya, & Minak, A., 2018):…”

Orientation of the Head and Trunk During Functional Upper Limb Movement

“…Orientation of the head engages visual, vestibular and spinal neck proprioceptive systems [16][17][18] serving to regulate movements of the hand [19]. In particular, coordinated head and gaze orientation are thus fundamental in throwing [20,21], catching [22], and striking actions [23] common to various sports.…”