Agility training in volleyball

Abstract

Introduction: Volleyball is an intermittent, extremely dynamic and open-skill team sport in which players perform a variety of acyclic movements while constantly changing game situation. The purpose of this systematic review was to provide a summary of the research that has examined intervention strategies to improve agility performance in volleyball and to synthesize the tests used to evaluate agility in volleyball.

Evidence acquisition: A systematic review was performed in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar with titles, abstracts, and full texts that were analyzed according to predefined inclusion criteria to find relevant studies. Moreover, the methodological quality of the studies selected was assessed.

Evidence synthesis: Twelve studies (N.=348 participants) were included. The selected studies had a methodological quality rated poor-to-moderate (average score of 3.9, range: 1 to 6). Results showed that of all the training interventions, plyometric-based training present the greatest improvement in agility (average of 7.7%). Moreover, the agility T-test was the most used test.

Conclusions: Considering the poor-to-moderate methodological quality, there is a need for developing specific longitudinal and controlled studies with the aim of studying the effect of diversified training interventions on the development of agility in volleyball players.