Motion Analysis of Volleyball Serving

Motion Analysis of Volleyball Serving

Introduction

                “No volleyball play can begin without a serve, and the serve is the only technique that is totally under your control. In other endeavors, you cannot succeed without believing in yourself, and that belief is completely under your control” (Kiraly, 1998).

Although volleyball has been in existence for more than 100 years, biomechanical analysis of the sport only began a little over a decade ago (Nickitas, 1989). Digitization, velocities, trajectory angles, performance mechanics, and correlation factors have been studied with the serve in volleyball (Strohmeyer, 1988).  According to McLaughlin (1977), these elements may take on a variety of measurement methods. Through these factors, in-depth studies can be made according to the effectiveness of serves in the game of volleyball. It has been stated that in order to win and win consistently, a team must make fewer errors than its opponents (Slaymaker & Brown, 1970). Because serving is a time of importance for scoring in the game, an error on the serve is an error that must be avoided. The serve is the only skill used to put the ball into play and the only skill in volleyball in which the server has total control during the execution (Viera & Ferguson, 1996). Gambardella (1982) pointed out that an offensive serve must contain the three important features of velocity, movement, and placement. Studies by Sawula (1976) evaluated the serve’s effectiveness by the opposing team’s ability to develop an attack. This means that when a serve forces a passer to commit a pass away from the setter, the play will not be executed to its fullest potential. This is an obvious advantage for the serving team.

As a result, the purpose of this study is to find out either float serve, or jump serve is more beneficial to volleyball serving speed, in order to increase effectiveness of serving skills.

Method (15%)

                In this study, Kinovea is used for data collection. It is a free 2D motion analysis software that can be used to measure kinematic parameters. Ma Long Ching, who is a 8-year-experience volleyball player is invited to be a subject for this test. He is asked to do one float serve and one jump serve before the serving line. Besides, a brief medical history was gathered typically from him for an assurance of the eligibility for the study exercise. And hence, no one reported a history of surgical treatment on shoulders and elbows, and also during testing, no one of them complained of pain on the shoulders and elbows. Indoor Volleyball Size 5 from MIKASA will be used to perform test, which is 650 – 670mm circumference, 260 – 280g weight, and recommend 0.325 kgf/cm2 inner pressure.

Table 1: Subject Information

The float serve is done by contacting the ball is such a way that the ball does not spin which makes it more likely to float. A floater is much tougher to pass because the flight of the ball is much less predictable. The volleyball floating action is similar to a knuckle ball pitch in baseball. For a floater serve, the server will keep the arm extended at contact and track the ball to target.

Jump serve is done by the ball is held between the waist and shoulder height, resting in the palm of either hand. For the execution phase, the approach is begun by stepping forward, and the ball is released with a flip of the wrist. The ball is tossed forward as to reach its peak at 3.66 meters (12 feet) to 4.575 meters (15 feet) so the server may complete a spike approach for the serve. While the last two steps of the approach are taken, the arms begin a down and back swing and the non-dominant arm tracks the ball while the dominant arm draws back in the bow and arrow position.  Contact is made with a fully extended arm, and the open hand contacts the ball, while beginning to snap the wrist.

In the study, jump height (linear variable), and trunk flexion (angular variable) were employed to compare the volleyball serving speed.

Photo 2(a) & 2(b): Float serve trunk flexion angle & Jump serve trunk flexion angle

            It took place in Tiu Keng Leng Sports Centre. Ma Long Ching is asked to wear clothing which is tight fitted and reflective bony landmark clearly, thus increase the accuracy of analyzing data.

            Again, after warming up they performed a series of serves and spikes based on their effective performance in the field. On the other hand, the order of skills was explicitly assigned as per every athlete. And therefore, for the spike attempts, an investigator set the ball for the athlete and then the three kinds of overhead attacks were done typically across the body as well as diagonal spikes (Bandeiras, 2019). Besides, a straight-ahead spike especially that which follow-through of the hitting arm along the ipsilateral side of an athlete and also an off-speed cross-body roll short was done. After finished all the tasks, then started data collection.

Results (5%)

Table 2: Data result from Kinovea

                The calibration of measuring the parameter is diameter of the size 5 volleyball. Also, the jumping height start measuring from toe to heel, in order to achieve the highest jumping point. From the above result, it clearly shown the jump height of jump serve is much higher than float serve, at the same time the trunk flexion angular velocity of jump serve is 3.03 m/s faster than float serve. Thus, the serving speed of jump serve technique is faster than float serve. Lets discuss in the following parts.

Discussion (15%)

Table 3. Shows kinetic parameters for every skill at various time points selected during the study (Fuchs et al., 2019).

Table 4: Shows kinematic parameters for every skill of various time points selected during the study (Fuchs et al., 2019).

According to table 3, the maximum external rotation for jump serve is greater than that of float serve typically at 41.3 and 32.9 respectively. This suggests that the linear momentum is exponentially higher during a jump serve than a float serve hence, an athlete should apply a maximum external rotation in a jump serve than a float serve. On the other hand, the arm acceleration phase in a jump serve is higher than the float serve typically at the values of 359 and 331 respectively (Fuchs et al., 2019). And hence stipulates that the momentum of force required for the athlete to hit the ball in the jump serve is more as compared to that of the float serve especially at a net height of 2.24m (Fuchs et al., 2019).

Nevertheless, according to table 4, in the arm acceleration phase, the maximum elbow extension angular velocity is higher in the jump serve as opposed to that of a float serve typically at the values 1532 and 1416 respectively. And therefore, this posits that the angular moment for an athlete to strike a ball should be greater when the ball is served as opposed to when the ball is on air (Ozawa et al., 2019). And thus, the range of motion towards the ball in the jump serve should be exponentially high as opposed to when the ball is on the air. Besides, during ball contact, the shoulder abduction angle is observed to be smaller during the jump serve as opposed to during a float serve (Ozawa et al., 2019). And therefore, it suggests that the abduction angle of the shoulder of an athlete should correspond to the acceleration at which the ball is dug or received upon contact. On the other hand, the elbow flexion angle and shoulder horizontal abduction angle are also perceived to be smaller during the jump serve as compared to during a float serve upon the ball contact (Ozawa et al., 2019). And hence, this asserts that the average momentum of force requires a smaller angle of flexion during a jump serve for the ball to accelerate towards the opponent. Moreover, the shoulder horizontal abduction angle should be smaller upon contact with the ball during the jump serve to increase the acceleration of the ball (Singh, 2019).

And lastly, during a jump serve the post-contact speed of a ball is higher than that of the float serve. And this is evidenced by the values 15.5 and 14.1 respectively. Therefore, it suggests that the force at which the ball accelerates passed the net of height 2.24m should be high hence velocity increases and time decreases during a jump serve as opposed to when the ball is tossed in the air or floats.

Conclusion

The velocity of the ball during the jump serve is always higher than the velocity during a float serve. Also, the acceleration rate of ball in the jump serve tend to be higher than the rate of acceleration during float serve at a constant height dimension that is 2.24m net height.

Reference (5%)

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