revista motricidade

Motricidade
© FTCD/FIP-MOC
2012, vol. 8, n. S1, pp. 73-79 Suplemento do 2º SIPD/CIDESD
The latent order of complexity in team ball sports
D. Araújo 1,2
1 - Faculty of Human Kinetics, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal
2 - CIPER (Interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Human Performance), Lisbon, Portugal
In this work we addressed the definition of complexity in team ball sports, as well as ways to explain
how the players cope with this complexity (but don't have to control it), by expressing order states
congruent with goal achievement. Complexity is defined as the quantity of information that is needed
to describe a system. However, there is a latent simplicity in the complexity of each phenomenon. This
complexity is probably more a reflection of “boundary conditions” of our understanding, than the
phenomena themselves. Complexity seems to be a surrogate for processes, ideas, structures, etc. But
strictly speaking, if one looks at the smaller pieces, they are often quite simple. This is evident in the
construction of a world championship, a team, human neural connections, cellular metabolism, etc. –
it’s a matter of scale. If one looks at a team, it becomes immediately apparent that from a purely
structural perspective, it is very simple: players compose it. The difficulty is that they are connected in
a variety of ways. And, moreover, they are communicating to each other very often simultaneously.
But, again, the communication itself is simple – if one knows the “language”. Therefore the complexity
is tied to the interconnections. Knowledge of the interconnections is necessary to understand the
whole phenomenon. The role of the sport scientist is to objectively capture this interconnectedness in
the same (simple!) way expert players and coaches do. Several examples on team ball sports will be
presented.
Keywords: complexity, collective behavior, sport
A review of performance analysis in Volleyball
I. Mesquita 1,2
1 - Centre of Research, Education, Innovation and Intervention in Sport
2 - University of Porto, Sport Faculty, Portugal
Performance analysis in Volleyball has been based on identifying potentially important game actions
from a large number of studies ranging from the purely descriptive to those that have utilized
correlational analyses. However, more recent research suggests that game performance occurs under
dynamical and interactive conditions that are both time and context dependent. Consequently,
analyzing the relationships among and between variables could be more useful to understanding the
issues in question than the study of frequencies of behaviors. Such a belief supports the need for an
ecological notational analysis, one that considers the match as a complex dynamic system. Due to the
probabilistic nature of systemic processes, a promising approach to understanding the game may rely
in establishing whether a state of the system augments or impairs the probability of a certain future
state occurring. This historical feature points towards the importance of knowing the context of
emergence of certain behaviors. Research has been moving in this direction, scrutinizing the
sequentially of the events and their time course as well as the context of their emergence. Therefore,
an analysis of probabilistic relationships between game actions that might predict certain outcomes, as
well as taking into account situational variables (such as, the effects of quality of opposition and match
status) has increasingly taken centre research stage. Preliminary findings from such work demonstrate
a high functional dependence of technical and tactical actions throughout the game flow where, and in
some extent, the quality of opposition and match status determine the game performance.
Keywords: notational analysis, volleyball, dynamic approach, situational variables