THE INFLUENCE OF THE FIRST PASS ON THE VOLLEYBALL BLOCKERS’ DECISION-MAKING

ABSTRACT This study examined the information constraining volleyball blockers’ decision-making as they attempted to anticipate an opponent's shot. The role of the ball flight information emerging from the interaction between the digger and the setter was investigated. In the first experiment a kinematic analysis of the ball trajectory was run in order to determine its influence on setter’s action. In the second experiment players were asked to predict the block location by watching a video involving (i) the complete ball flight or (ii) only the final ball flight. It was verified that the setting occurred more frequently to the outside hitter when setter was far from the net (experiment 1). In addition, it was found that the ball flight information and the setter position guided the blockers anticipation (experiment 2). These findings suggest that the passing information can provide support for blocking anticipation in specific situations in which the ball flight was characterised by high altitudes.