A comparison of the visual skills of two different age group high school rugby players
- Authors: Venter, Susanna Catharina
- Date: 2008-10-27T07:44:23Z
- Subjects: Vision , Rugby football players , Sports psychology , Vision testing
- Type: Thesis
- Identifier: uj:13464 , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/1349
- Description: M.Phil. , Previously, not much attention was given to vision and visual skills in the everyday sport setting. The attention that it did get was not from optometry and ophthalmology, these two were late comers on this subject, but more and more athletes and coaches are realizing the importance of vision in their sport performance, although vision training were done inadvertently in the past. Sport performance involves motor and vision aspects. If the motor section does not work efficiently, the vision section will be hampered; in return, if the vision section does not work efficiently, the motor section will also be hampered. For this reason, vision was investigated. In this study an investigation was done on 17-year old (n = 35) and 15-year old (n = 28) rugby players. The aim of this study was to determine whether the visual skills of the 17-year-old boys would be better than that of the 15-year-old boys. Both groups were subjected to a battery of eleven rugby related visual tests. The results obtained, show that in some of the software skills such as eye-hand coordination, eye-body coordination and visual reaction time the 17-year-old group performed statistically better (p<0.05) than the 15-year-old group. The latter group only performed statistically better (p<0.05) in skills classified as hardware skills such as static visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and stereopsis. The results showed a general lack of visual skills. Sport specific visual training programmes will be needed to motor performance training if these athletes are going to develop in elite performers. , Professor Jannie Ferreira
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Personality, self-efficacy and locus of control in golf players: a correlational study
- Authors: Lovell, Caroline Adele
- Date: 2008-11-06T07:25:05Z
- Subjects: Personality , Jungian psychology , Locus of control , Self-efficacy , Golfers| , Sports psychology
- Type: Thesis
- Identifier: uj:14596 , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/1517
- Description: M.A. , None
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The visual skills of professional and amateur rugby players
- Authors: Ludeke, Alida Anelia
- Date: 2008-10-27T07:45:05Z
- Subjects: Rugby football players , Vision , Visual training , Sports psychology
- Type: Thesis
- Identifier: uj:13487 , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/1351
- Description: M.Phil. , This study consists of three separate publications. The first article attempts to evaluate the difference in the visual skill level of professional versus non-professional rugby players. The software visual skills, involving skills such as eye-hand coordination, eye-body coordination, central-peripheral awareness, and reaction time, were examined. The results indicate that the professional players did out perform the non-professional players on all these skills except for visual concentration. Not all the results were however statistically significant. The importance of the above skills in the game of rugby is discussed and recommendations as to the implementation of vision enhancement programmes are made. The second study explores the importance of the ‘hardware’ factors of the visual system in the game of rugby. A group of professional and club rugby players were tested and the results compared. The results were also compared with the established norms for elite athletes. The findings indicate no significant difference in hardware skills between professional and club players. Compared with the norms for elite athletes, performance of most of the rugby players were average or even worse. This suggests that in the game of rugby the hardware skills may be of lesser importance and that visual enhancement programmes should focus more on improving the players’ software skills. The hardware visual skills should not be neglected though because these provide a base from where the software skills can develop. Thirdly we wanted to determine whether there are a statistically significantly difference between the visual skill levels of forward and back line players in rugby and whether they performed visually according to the norms established for elite athletes. The results indicates that there is much room for improvement for both forward and back line players in eye-hand coordination, visual concentration and central-peripheral awareness because these skills, play an important role in a sport like rugby and because the players under performed according to the established norms. Thus attention should be given to develop the hardware visual skills like accommodation and fusion to an average level of performance, to eliminate any potential limits on the software visual skills. Consistent, position specific visual training should be incorporated in the daily training routine of these players to develop the software visual skills to their full potential. , Prof. Jannie Ferreira
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