The purposes of this study were 1) to develop a practical and comprehensive test battery for evaluating decision making when choosing the best play in various basketball game situations, and 2) to determine the best marking method in actual situations based on methods considering the answers by two or more authorities’ because current decisionmaking tests are too simple and not practical for actual situations and decision-making in basketball is complicated and can have differ results for different authorities.
    A total of 366 decision-making test items using a videotape system composed from 7 playing scenes and 4 decisionmaking processes were devised. Eighty-nine males and 68 female university players along with 7 authorities with a JBA coach license completed the decision-making test battery.
     Forty-nine test items having sufficient reliability and validity were chosen for the investigation of the best marking method. Three marking methods were assessed using the 49 test items: 1) an only one correct answer method, 2) a two or more correct answer method, and 3) an allotting mark method that was marked according to the number of answers chosen by the authorities. Reliability, criterion-related validity, and internal validity tests showed that the allotting mark method was the most reliable and valid among the three methods.
    The reliable and valid decision-making test battery comprised of 49 test items had high content validity because it covered all typical 7 play scenes and 4 decision-making processes which corresponded to Inagaki’s Peculiar Strategy for Offense in Basketball (1982, 1993, 1999). In addition, this test battery was considered very practical because it could discriminate players’ ability between starting members and second-string players.

    The purposes of this study were to investigate the influence of changes in the subjective effort at the high intensity range on the ball speed in the pitching and to make clear its repeatability. Twenty male university baseball pitchers took part in this study as the subjects. Each subject randomly performed three sets of pitching at five different subjective efforts of 90, 92.5, 95, 97.5, and 100％ maximum. The ball speed of each trial was measured with the speed radar gun. After one week, the retest was carried out in the same procedure. The intraday (inter-set) and the interday intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated to examine the repeatability of the ball speed in each subjective effort. As the result, the ball speed tended to increase as the subjective effort was high. There were significant differences in the ball speed (all p<0.01) except the combinations of the subjective efforts next to each other. The relative ball speed that referred to the trial at the maximum effort as 100％ tended to be higher than each value of the subjective effort. This difference tended to decrease as the subjective effort was increased. There were significant differences among all combinations of the subjective efforts (all p<0.01). The intraday (inter-set) ICCs (0.90-0.96) and the interday ICCs (0.80-0.88) in each subjective effort were all significant (all p<0.01).

    Slopes are often used in sprint training, but there has been little previous study of the effects of slope inclination on sprinting motion. This study therefore investigates this topic with the aim of improving the utilization of slopes in sprint training. Participants were 9 male collegiate sprinters, who performed 40 m sprints on three kinds of slopes (1.3％, 7.4％, and 13.1％) and on a flat course. At 30 m from the starting line, three high-speed video cameras recorded each participant’s motion for analysis. Analysis indicated that steeper slopes increasingly decreased sprint speed and stride length. On the 1.3％ and 7.4％ slope, the angle of the knee joint before grounding of the foot and the angle of the foot angle when grounding of the foot was smaller than on a flat course. On the 13.1％ slope, grounding of the foot was performed as the foot was pulled toward the body, and the angle of the knee joint when grounding of the foot was smaller than on a flat course. And steeper slopes increasingly, increased knee joint extension during the support phase and the time of latter support phase. In sprint training on the 1.3％ slope, sprinters could sprint at speeds similar to those on the flat course, but it needs to consider that the degree of ankle extension during the support phase increased. Sprint training on the 7.4％ and 13.1％ slopes was useful to strengthen the extension power of knee joint, but a necessary consideration was that sprint running motion during the support phase differed from that of high speed sprinting.

The purpose of this study was to analyze movement of collegiate male soccer players in each three positions (defenders: DF, midfielders: MF, forwards: FW) in a match-play. The movement characteristics of all players (DF : n＝8, MF : n＝6, FW : n＝6) were examined their movement during match-play by time-motion analysis on potable global positioning system. The time to match-play was set for 90 min (45 min each of first and second halves). The total distance traveled during whole match-play in the three positions were 10687.4 ± 1091.9 m in DF, 11392.5 ± 638.6 m in MF, 11683.5 ± 1016.5 m in FW, respectively, and the distance in MF and FW were significantly longer than that in DF (p<0.05). The average heart rate during whole match-play showed significantly higher values in MF and FW than in DF (p<0.05). And, the frequency of impact during whole match-play in MF was greater than that in FW and DF (p<0.05). On the other hand, the sprint duration with most number of times in the all positions were 2 s and 3 s, whereas no significant difference was observed among the three positions. These results suggest that player’s movements in a match play vary in each three positions. Moreover, the male collegiate soccer players, MF and FW may be required to more aerobic capacity compared with DF. Thus, the movement of each position is important when designing physical training programs for improvement performance.