The effect of 12 weeks plyometric training on some selected physical fitness components of U-17 female volleyball project trainees in the Amhara Region

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effect of 12 weeks of plyometric training on some selected physical fitness components; in the case of u-17 female volleyball project trainees in Debark town. For the current study, the true experimental design was employed, Trainees were comprehensibly selected and divided into two groups as experimental (n = 15) and control group (n = 15) blindly. For both experimental and control groups technical and tactical volleyball training for three days, a week for forty minutes per training session was given. Additionally, only for experimental group participants plyometric training was provided for two days a week for forty minutes per training session during the entire training period (12 weeks). The plyometric training protocol was prepared by considering the FITT principle and adapted from Gjinovci et al.(2017)(see the protocol next to reference lists). Before and after the intervention of plyometric training, for both groups, vertical jump test, T-test, 30-second jump test, and modified star excursion test were conducted to measure power, agility, muscular endurance, and dynamic balance respectively. To determine the effect of the training descriptive statistics, mean and standard deviation were made. Paired was carried out to compare the pretest and post-test mean difference of selected variables within the group. The results showed that a statistically significant difference was observed in vertical jump, agility, muscular endurance, and balance before and after intervention and between groups. On the contrary, there was no statistically significant difference in the control group in all variables (p>0.05). We conclude that after 12 weeks of interventions of plyometric training statistically significant differences were observed in power, agility, muscular endurance, and balance of the experimental group. For instance, the means result of power were found MD = 5.25333, t = 15.761, and p =0. 000, for agility it was MD = -2.43, t = -13.93 and p = 0. 000 for muscular endurance, MD = 5.93, t = 11.04 and p = 0. 000 and on balance the results were LA and RA was MD = 5.10000, t = 5.979 and p = 0. 000 and MD = 6.01333, t = 7.667 p = 0.000 respectively.