Biomechanical Study on Drag Flick in Field Hockey

Field hockey is a game played with a ball and stick. In this game players attempt to score goals by hitting, pushing or flicking the ball with hockey sticks into the opposing team's goal. In field hockey the penalty corner was introduced for offences by defenders in the circle. In recent years, the innovation of drag flick becomes a vital part of teams attacking arsenal due to goal scoring opportunity. In the execution and conversion of drag flick, various factors are involved. Amongst all, biomechanical factor is one of the decisive factors which have been neglected by the Indian researchers. Thus, the present study was designed to reveal the related biomechanical factors of drag flick execution in penalty corner. For the purpose of this study, All India Intervarsity (3) and Senior State (2) level male hockey players were recruited using stratified random sampling method. The mean of All India Intervarsity players in age, height and weight were 21 yrs (SD 3), 162 cm (SD 7.55) and 54.67 kg (SD 5.03) and mean of Senior State players were 20 yrs (SD 1.41), 159.5 cm (SD 2.12) and 49.5 kg (SD 2.12), respectively. To obtain data, two high speed Canon Legria HF S10 camcorders operating at 60 Hz were used. The players and ball movements during the drag flick execution were recorded. Video footages were downloaded, slashed to desired footages and edited for biomechanical analysis. The selected biomechanical variables were ball velocity, acceleration, stick velocity at drag lick, displacement of ball, step length, contact time, contact length and segmental angles were shoulder angles, elbow angles, hip angle and knee angle. All variables were digitized with the help of Silicon Coach Pro7 motion analysis software. The acquired data of the variables were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis and computing t-test among All India Intervarsity and Senior State players. The results showed there were no significant differences among the groups at 0.05 level of significance.