1998 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 30-39
For the purpose of exploring desirable opponent perception in Kendo, we investigated how Kendo athletes sized up their opponent and planed a coming game with the opponent in watching the opponents'past games.
The subjects were 11 female college Kendo athletes,6 athletes with high performance level and 5 athletes with medium performance level. Ten female college Kendo athletes who had a different Kendo style to each other and belonged to a different college from the subjects were selected as opponents for this study. After watching the video-taped game of each opponent, the subjects rated the opponent on 19 bipolar scales, described their game plan against her and answered the reason why they chose the plan, whether they are good at performing the plan, and whether they change the plan or not in the case of that the plan does not work out in the game.
The major findings were as follows.1) After watching the opponent's game, the subjects recognized the opponents on the basis of their “competence”, “offensive attitude”, “WAZA style”, and “regularity. ”Compared with the result of our precedent study on the cognitive structure before watching an opponent's game, the cognitive structure after watching an opponent's game was more distinctive and attending more to the opponent's WAZA.2) In most of the cases, the subjects had more than one plan and got ready for partly or totally changing the plans which might not work out in the actual game.3) Both the high and the medium performance level athletes made their game plans with referring to the opponent's distinctive movement and WAZA style rather than with adhering to their own WAZA which they were good at. However,4) compared with the medium performance level athletes, the high performance level athletes made more plans and were more likely to be good at performing the plans they made.
These findings suggested that watching an opponent's game before competition would be beneficial for sizing up the opponent and making game plans. However, whether the preparation actually works out in competition seemed to depend on the variety of athletes' techniques and on the variety of the ways in which they can use their techniques to advantege.
