Validity of a Reactive Agility Test for Australian Football

Purpose: To study the validity of a video-based reactive agility test in Australian footballers. Methods: 15 higher performance, 15 lower performance, and 12 nonfootballers completed a light-based reactive agility test (LRAT), a video-based reactive agility test (VRAT), and a planned test (PLAN). Results: With skill groups pooled, agility time in PLAN (1346 +/- 66 ms) was significantly faster (P = .001) than both reactive tests (VRAT = 1550 +/- 102 ms; LRAT = 1572 +/- 97 ms). In addition, decision time was significantly faster (P = .001; d = 0.8) in LRAT (278 +/- 36 ms) than VRAT (311 +/- 47 ms). The correlation in agility time between the two reactive tests (r = .75) was higher than between the planned and reactive tests (r = .41-.68). Higher performance players had faster agility and movement times on VRAT (agility, 130 +/- 24 ms, d = 1.27, P = .004; movement, 69 +/- 73 ms, d = 0.88, P = .1) and LRAT (agility, 95 +/- 86 ms, d = 0.99, P = .08; movement, 79 +/- 74 ms; d = 0.9; P = .08) than the nonfootballers. In addition, higher (55 39 ms, d = 0.87, P = .05) and lower (40 +/- 57 ms, d = 0.74, P = .18) performance groups exhibited somewhat faster agility time than nonfootballers on PLAN. Furthermore, higher performance players were somewhat faster than lower performance for agility time on the VRAT (63 +/- 85 ms, d = 0.82, P = .16) and decision time on the LRAT (20 +/- 39 ms, d = 0.66, P = .21), but there was little difference in PLAN agility time between these groups (15 +/- 150 ms, d = 0.24, P = .8). Conclusions: Differences in decision-making speed indicate that the sport-specific nature of the VRAT is not duplicated by a light-based stimulus. In addition, the VRAT is somewhat better able to discriminate different groups of Australian footballers than the LRAT. Collectively, this indicates that a video-based test is a more valid assessment tool for examining agility in Australian footballers.