Assessment of Wellness Status Among a Multi-Ethnic Based Adult Sample

Wellness is an encompassing canopy harnessing multiple of activities aimed at helping individuals recognize components of lifestyle that are detrimental to health. However, the challenge still remains that most individuals seldom identify and practice positive health behaviors that can enhance fitness and wellness. Objectives: As a starting point, the present study assessed the wellness status of a multi-ethnic based adult population in Lagos, Nigeria. Methods: The wellness lifestyle Questionnaire (WLQ), which provides an initial rating of the individual’s current efforts to stay healthy and assessed six major areas, namely: emotional health, fitness and body care, environmental health, stress, nutrition and medical self-responsibility was used as the instrument for data collection. Eight hundred and thirty-eight males, as well as one thousand four hundred and sixty-two females' adults, were purposely recruited for this study. Results: It was obvious from the data collected that 61.03% of the population sampled needs improvement on their health status while only 8.04% had excellent health and wellness status with just 30.93% of the population in a good health condition. Conclusion: Providing health and wellness education by fitness experts, therefore, becomes inevitable and a challenge for health and wellness experts

News Reporting of Injury Prevalence in Football: A Study of Selected Nigerian Online Newspapers

Despite the importance of football as an effective means of developing physical activity and fitness, routine data of football-related injuries are either inadequate or underreported, particularly in Nigeria. To develop an understanding of the football-related injuries and determine the prospects for prevention, logical and useful information specifying the occurrence of these incidents is necessary. Using a content analysis of 94 football-related news articles, this study identified the most commonly reported football-related injuries in Nigerian newspapers and determined their extent of coverage from agenda-setting perspectives. Altogether, five national newspapers with the highest readership and online popularity were selected using purposive sampling. Only football-related news articles were collected from the respective websites of the newspapers using internet-based searches between January 2015 and September 2019.The findings showed that knee, ankle, and hamstring are the most commonly affected locations in football-related injuries according to the news reports.This study shows that media-based analysis of football-related injuries could supplement other methods, such as prospective and retrospective analyses, particularly in the Nigerian context

The Identification of High Potential Archers Based on Fitness and Motor Ability Variables: A Support Vector Machine Approach

Support Vector Machine (SVM) has been shown to be an effective learning algorithm for classification and prediction. However, the application of SVM for prediction and classification in specific sport has rarely been used to quantify/discriminate low and high-performance athletes. The present study classified and predicted high and low-potential archers from a set of fitness and motor ability variables trained on different SVMs kernel algorithms. 50 youth archers with the mean age and standard deviation of 17.0 ± 0.6 years drawn from various archery programmes completed a six arrows shooting score test. Standard fitness and ability measurements namely hand grip, vertical jump, standing broad jump, static balance, upper muscle strength and the core muscle strength were also recorded. Hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis (HACA) was used to cluster the archers based on the performance variables tested. SVM models with linear, quadratic, cubic, fine RBF, medium RBF, as well as the coarse RBF kernel functions, were trained based on the measured performance variables. The HACA clustered the archers into high-potential archers (HPA) and low-potential archers (LPA), respectively. The linear, quadratic, cubic, as well as the medium RBF kernel functions models, demonstrated reasonably excellent classification accuracy of 97.5% and 2.5% error rate for the prediction of the HPA and the LPA. The findings of this investigation can be valuable to coaches and sports managers to recognise high potential athletes from a combination of the selected few measured fitness and motor ability performance variables examined which would consequently save cost, time and effort during talent identification programme

Machine Learning in Sports: Identifying Potential Archers

This brief highlights the association of different performance variables that influences archery performance and the employment of different machine learning algorithms in the identification of potential archers. The sport of archery is often associated with a myriad of performance indicators namely bio-physiological, psychological, anthropometric as well as physical fitness. Traditionally, the determination of potential archers is carried out by means of conventional statistical techniques. Nonetheless, such methods often fall short in associating non-linear relationships between the variables. This book explores the notion of machine learning that is capable of mitigating the aforesaid issue. This book is valuable for coaches and managers in identifying potential archers during talent identification programs.

Role of psychological factors on the performance of elite soccer players

The application of psychological strategies to improve performance in sports has developed significantly over the past few decades. Nowadays, coaches are beginning to realize the significance of psychological factors in enhancing player’s performance. However, determining the magnitude of the impact of psychological factors in a soccer game may assist in developing player’s capacity to perform. This study aims to determine the role of psychological factors on the performance of elite soccer players. We enrolled elite players competing in the Malaysian Super League with a mean age of ± 25 years. Psychological constructs questionnaire proposed by PSIS-R-5 was administered to the players, and the scores of each player were recorded. We analyzed the performances of the players for eight weeks. A standard multiple regression was performed at p = 0.05 alpha levels with the motivation, confidence, anxiety control, mental preparation, team emphasis, concentration and cognition as (IVs) to predict performance (DV). A Noteworthy regression equation was found (F (7, 12) = 15.109, P < .001) with R² of .90 indicating that the model has approximately accounted for the total of 90% variability. Although correlations were found.57, .14, .88, .71, .65, .76 and .42 respectively between the (IVs) and the (DV), none of the (IVs) is a predictor of the (DV) (P > 0.05). Based on the results of this analysis, it is tempting to conclude that, despite the correlation between psychological factors and performance, psychological factors alone could not determine the performance of elite soccer players

Mechanical properties of oil palm waste lightweight aggregate concrete with fly ash as fine aggregate replacement

Environmental degradation posed by fly ash (FA) disposal from coal power plants and shell from the oil palm fruit processing trade is non-trivial. The destruction of flora and fauna resulting from the extraction of river sand and granite aggregate from the green hills in an uncontrolled fashion for the production of concrete that is widely used in the construction industry does also require a solution. Introducing oil palm shell (OPS) and fly ash as a mixing ingredient in zero granite lightweight aggregate concrete production is an appealing notion. Success in utilising the available solid waste would reduce dumping of these by-products and consumption of natural aggregates, thus ensuring the preservation of the environment for the future generation. Therefore, this research explores the influence of FA content as sand replacement towards the mechanical and durability properties of agro-based lightweight concrete. Five concrete mixes with FA quantity ranging from 0% to 40% were prepared. Two forms of curing procedure were practised viz. water and indoor air curing. All the mixes were tested for fresh and hardened characteristic as well as sulphate resistance. The test results demonstrated that a substitution of 10% sand with FA yielded better mechanical properties and denser concrete with more resistant to sulphate attack in comparison to the control mix. The utilisation of two industrial waste materials such as FA and OPS may address the issue of paucity of natural resources that is experienced in the construction industry, particularly in the case of natural granite and river sand

The application of support vector machine in classifying potential archers using bio-mechanical indicators

This study classifies potential archers from a set of bio-mechanical indicators trained via different Support Vector Machine (SVM) models. 50 youth archers drawn from a number of archery programmes completed a one end archery shooting score test. Bio-mechanical evaluation of postural sway, bow movement, muscles activation of flexor and extensor as well as static balance were recorded. k-means clustering technique was used to cluster the archers based on the indicators tested. Fine, medium and coarse radial basis function kernel-based SVM models were trained based on the measured indicators. The five-fold cross-validation technique was utilised in the present investigation. It was shown from the present study, that the employment of SVM is able to assist coaches in identifying potential athletes in the sport of archery

Relative age effect in U-16 Asian Championship Soccer Tournament

Athletes born at the beginning of the year may present advantages in terms of physical characteristics, motor ability or cognitive knowledge that could increase their chances for selection against their peers. This circumstance could lead to the over-representation of older athletes in an age-defined competition, a phenomenon commonly referred to as relative age effect (RAE). Although, a number of studies have demonstrated that RAE is apparent in youth soccer, such studies rarely investigate the performance advantage that likely exists across the birth month of the athletes. The current study aims to determine the presence of RAE in the under 16 Asian Football Confederation Championship (AFC); investigate the effect of RAE on the team qualification success; as well as ascertain the existence of RAE in choice of playing position amongst the soccer players. Data for the 2018 AFC under 16 qualifications matches were obtained from the AFC. A total of 719 players from 32 countries participated in the qualification competitions. Chi-square for goodness fit is used to determine the existence of the RAE across the players’ month of birth while logistic regression is applied to analyze the differences of the quartiles’ distribution with respect to the quartile, qualification status (qualifier or non-qualifier) as well as the playing position of the players. The results demonstrate the presence of RAE in the AFC under 16 soccer tournaments [χ2(4) = 21.53; p < 0.001] with the largest number of older players dominating the qualified team. Likewise, a substantial difference is observed with regards to the quartile and various playing positions of the players at p < 0.05

Positional differences in the performance of volleyball players for anthropometric and psychological readiness in a congested fixture tournament

In a congested volleyball fixture tournament, the demands of physical and psychological responses are heightened due to the high paced nature of the tournament. Thus, some performance factors such as anthropometric characteristics coupled with psychological readiness may differentiate players in their respective roles. This study investigates the performance differences between Spiker, Libero, and Setter based on anthropometric and psychological readiness during a congested fixture tournament. Anthropometric indexes comprising of height, weight and age were assessed while test for performance strategies instrument was used to evaluate the competitional and practice psychological readiness of the players before the tournament. The players' performances were analysed in real-time during a congested fixture volleyball tournament. A discriminant analysis model demonstrated that 70.60% of the variance within the dataset could be explained in one dimension with height, competitional readiness and skill performance as the most contributing factors in separating the players. Moreover, analysis of variance revealed that spikers are significantly taller than liberos and executed higher performance compared to setters p 0.05. Volleyball players possess unique profiles that are essential for each position to ensure success. The findings herein could assist coaches and other relevant stakeholders in making an informed decision when preparing teams for a fixture congested tournament in men indoor volleyball

Development of tablet application based notational analysis system and the establishment of its reliability in soccer

Multiple systems of notational analysis are been used in performance analysis of soccer to provide coaches and players with information on their performance. The development of these various notational analysis tools has further made the analysis of players and team performance possible to deliver information to coaches in real time. Establishing reliability for notational analysis in soccer is necessary for the information to be relied upon. Despite this development, however, most performance analysts seldom report the reliability of their analysis assuming that the present of performance indicators could reflect the reliability of their analysis. This paper aims to develop a tablet-based notational analysis system and establish its reliability in the game of soccer. Performance indicators related to the requirement for the game were identified, operationalized and installed on tablet application. Eleven performance analysts were provided with eleven tablets installed with StatWatch application and instructed to analyse the performance of a particular player during a soccer match based on the performance indicators. Cronbach’s alpha and Cohen’s Kappa reliability testing was employed to test the consistency as well the level of agreement between the performance analysts at p ≤ .05 level of confidence. The result shows α=.90 and K=.89 (0.10, 95%), p < .001, respectively which suggested a high consistency of their measurement and indicated that the agreement between the performance analysts on their analysis was perfect and far beyond chance. Reliability in the notational analysis of soccer using tablet application could be achieved. Performance analysts should ensure the reliability of their analysis before being relayed to the coaches to avoid any bias and misleading information