Analysis of beach volleyball action sequences of female top athletes

The pur pose o f t he s tudy w as t o i nvestigate s equences of t ypical b each vol leyball actions to determine action patterns and anticipate athlete's behaviour. Videos from 18 games including 1645 action sequences consisting of 10918 actions from female World Tour at hletes w ere an alyzed. Single a ctions w ere r ecorded in a da ta ba se and probabilities of serve-reception, set-attacking, and reception-attacking action sequences were de termined b y m eans of da ta ba se que ries. C hi-square t ests w ere appl ied to determine significant patterns. Results did not reveal any superior t ype of serve which would create difficulties for the receiving team (p>0.05). The t ype of attack (smash or shot) did not significantly depend on the position of the setting. However, there was a tendency ( p= 0.054) t o ha rd a ttacks w hen t he ba ll w as pr eceded b y a s etting f ar a way from the net of from a lateral position near the side lines. The temporal position within a rally di d ne ither e ffect t he t ype nor t he qua lity of a ttack ( p>0.05). Contrariwise, t he quality o f t he pr eceding r eception di d i nfluence t he t ype ( p<0.01) a nd t he qua lity (p<0.05) of a ttack. F ollowing " good" r eceptions a thletes pr eferred ha rd a ttacks a nd were m ore effective c ompared to situation where t hey ha d "perfect" or "poor" receptions. A lthough de pendencies c ould not b e de tected i n a ll a nalyzed c ases t he analysis of beach volleyball action sequences even by simple means of probabilities is a promising method to determine tactical patterns in beach volleyball.