抄録
Recently, a decrease in children’s throwing ability has been recognized. Therefore, it is necessary to examine a simple training method that can be introduced in schools to increase children’s ability to throw. This study analyzes the effect of ball-throwing training (Zero-Mashitanage) on throwing performance in early elementary school children (1-2 year ones and year twos olds) by gender. Subjects included 120 healthy school children: 59 boys (experimental group: 30, control group: 29) and 61 girls (experimental group: 30, control group: 31). They underwent the Zero-Mashitanage training thrice a week for four weeks. The training included throwing a tennis ball 15 times with slightly less than the maximum effort. Results of the two-way ANOVA (one factor repeated measures: experimental and control groups × pre- and post-tests) showed that throwing performance was significantly higher in the post-test than that in the pre-test for both groups of boys and girls. However, change-rates (post-test/pre-test)×100) of throwing performance showed a significant difference in boys, but not in girls.
In conclusion, throwing performance improves with Mashitanage training at the frequency of three times a week for about one month in early elementary school children; however, these effects may vary by gender.
