Short-term effects of combined training on the performance of the Brazilian women’s basketball team

Abstract

– Competitions are considered of paramount importance for high-performance sports because they determine the entire orientation of the training process. When analyzing the calendar of the International Basketball Federation, it can be observed that international competitions occur in short periods of time. In this sense, the aim of this study was to verify the effects of the application of combined training in the short-term preparation period on the speed of athletes of the Brazilian women’s basketball team. Thirteen athletes participated in this study, who took part of the preparation for the 2015 Pan American Games. Athletes were submitted to anthropometric measures and biomotor capacity evaluation at cyclic speed-20m run, and acyclic speed-T test at the beginning (M0) and end of a 27-day preparation period (M1). Considering the period available for training, the total duration percentage was: technical / tactical 73.7%, strength and conditioning: 5.7%, preventive: 10.5% and general and special warm up: 10.1%. After data collection, the Shapiro-Wilk test was used to verify normality and then, the Student’s T test was also applied. The main results indicate that the best time to evaluate cyclic speed (M0 and M1, respectively) was 3.34 ± 0.22s and 3.39 ± 0.21s and acyclic speed (M0 and M1, respectively), 9.30 ± 0.49s and 9.52 ± 0.57s. The results of the current study suggest that short-term intervention was not efficient to improve the cyclic and acyclic speed of female basketball athletes.