Diseño de una herramienta de evaluación funcional para la aplicación de programas de fuerza en el proceso formativo del jugador de balonmano

Abstract

As a coach, and after many years of coaching both grassroots and high performance teams, a question that has always arisen for me was how to be clear about what percentages of strength to apply in the strength templates in physical training, and how to evaluate this procedure in order to have reliable data to be able to apply adequate exercises in time and form. In addition, that these data were obtained from technical gestures as close as possible to those of the real game in the sport of handball. Having the opportunity to do a thesis opened the door to investigate how to do it through an idea : to design a functional evaluation tool for the application of strength programs in the training process of the handball player. After a period of training and review of the most important literature on the subject, we decided to conduct several studies to make sense of the objectives we set out in the design of this battery, taking small steps in the development of research and opening doors for future research. The fact of being in a prestigious club at a national level and with stability over time, makes it a perfect laboratory for field work, and thus obtain data for the achievement of these studies. Physical tests can be a valuable means to identify the condition of a player and help in the optimal design of conditioning programs or sperc conditioning training (Szymanski, 2013; Van den Tillaar & Marques, 2011). However, paradoxically, to date, this evaluation has been performed through non-specific tests that measure the different skills through generic movements far from the reality of the game, such as the maximum speed test (20m or 30m) that is usually used in handball (Hermassi, Chelly, et al., 2018). This implies the need to find mechanisms that allow to evaluate these gestures in a natural way, extrapolating them to other performance factors (Hermassi, Chelly, et al., 2018). Today there is this possibility of analyzing specific gestures thanks to the emergence of new technological developments. These developments make it possible to adapt to the real requirements of sports practice, such as functional electromechanical dynamometry (DEMF). The validity and reliability of DEMF has been demonstrated in several previous studies under various conditions (Jerez-Mayorga et al., 2021 ; Martinez-Garcia et al., 2020; Rodriguez-Perea et al., 2019; Sánchez-Sánchez et al., 2021). For this reason, it would be useful to use the DEMF for the creation of a battery of tests that evaluate these specific gestures as close as possible to real handball game situations. The main objective of the thesis was to create a tool for the evaluation of the different manifestations of strength in handball technical gestures using the functional electromechanical dynamometer (DEMF). The conclusion is that the DEMF is a good assessment tool for the objectives proposed in the three studies and from a practical perspective, these results confirm that the DEMF could be applicable to assess physical performance in handball, and that it provides researchers and professionals with information at the same time as in regular training in the gym. In addition, the training session can be configured depending on the daily objective of the player and according to the level or demand of the weekly load.