Nic James

Middlesex University, UK · London Sport Institute

Concordance between 18 coaches (mean performance analysis experience: 8.3 ± 4.8 years) and 23 performance analysts (mean: 6.4 ± 4.1 years) regarding their performance analysis delivery within applied Olympic and Paralympic environments was investigated using survey-based methods. There was clear agreement on the provision, importance and need for f...

In spite of the extensive research on incidence site and type of injury in ballet and modern dancers, limited studies on injury in DanceSport have been reported. Therefore, this study determined retrospectively (within last 12 months) incidence, severity, site and type of injury, between gender and age-class in DanceSport. Participants were 97 inte...

PurposeWhilst some studies have comprehensively described the different features associated with the attacking process in football they have not produced a methodology of practical use for performance enhancement. This study presents a framework of comprehensive and meaningful metrics to objectively describe the attacking process so that useful per...

Purpose: The pressure exerted on racket sports players by the service has been well documented. Whilst the return of serve has been suggested through qualitative interviews as being of similar importance there is a dearth of quantitative data to support this contention. This study analyzed time, speed, and distance parameters related to the outcome...

PurposeThe pressure exerted on a squash player is a consequence of the quality of a shot coupled with the ability of the player to return the ball, namely, the coupling of the two players’ situation awareness (SA) abilities. SA refers to an awareness of all relevant sources of information, the ability to synthesize this information using domain kno...

PurposeThe aim of this study was to assess the reliability and validity of the new judging system in DanceSport.Methods Eighteen judges rated the 12 best placed adult dancing couples competing at an international competition. They marked each couple on all judging criteria on a 10 level scale. Absolute agreement and consistency of judging were calc...

Alternative approaches to the reductionist method for analysing football are needed to better understand factors typically not considered, for example off the ball runs by teammates. The dynamical systems approach, where the complex relationships between players is emphasised, predicts that goal scoring opportunities are preceded by instability in...

The study considered performance analysis and feedback from the perspective of the performance analyst through the investigation of the ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘when’ of practice within a selection of Olympic sports. Twenty-three performance analysts (experience 6.4 ± 4.1 years) engaged in a structured interview (85 ± 15 min) regarding their processes wi...

Previous research on performance indicators in rugby league has suggested that dimension reduction techniques should be utilised when analysing sporting data sets with a large number of variables. Forty-five rugby league team performance indicators, from all 27 rounds of the 2012, 2013 and 2014 European Super League seasons, collected by Opta, were...

Performance indicators allow for the objective quantification of performance, however, limited PI research for professional rugby league exists. Therefore, this paper assessed 24 relative PIs (home value minus away) from all 27 rounds of the 2012, 2013 and 2014 European Super League seasons, collected by Opta, amounting to 567 matches. Backwards lo...

The popularity of female soccer is increasing as well as the number of females playing soccer. Similarly, over the last twenty or so years, research in soccer has increased significantly, but a large disparity exists in the volume of studies involving male and female players. As a consequence of this, female players remain less well understood comp...

The aim of the research was to analyse the influencing factors of rebounding efficiency through observing position, activity and number of players struggling for rebounds. Rebounding situations were notated from all the games played by the best eight teams in Euroleague 2011/12. Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney tests were used to demonstrate the dif...

Situation awareness (SA) refers to the awareness of all relevant sources of information, an ability to synthesise this information using domain knowledge gained from past experiences and the ability to physically respond to a situation. Expert-novice differences have been widely reported in decision-making in complex situations although determining...

The physical demands and rally characteristics of elite-standard men's squash have not been well documented since recent rule changes (scoring and tin height). This information is needed to design optimal training drills for physical conditioning provided here based on an analysis of movement and shot information. Matches at the 2010 (n = 14) and 2...

The aim of this study was to examine the association between playing tactics, situational variables and creating scoring opportunities according to the type of start-up possession in a case-study. All team possessions (n=857) developed by the Spanish Football national team during the World Cup 2010 were analysed and grouped into “strategic set-play...

Abstract: Turner, A, James, N, Dimitriou, L, Greenhalgh, A, Moody, J, Fulcher, D, Mias, E, and Kilduff, L. Determinants of Olympic fencing performance and implications for strength and conditioning training. J Strength Cond Res 28(10): 3001–3011, 2014—Fencing is one of only a few sports that have featured at every modern Olympic games. Despite this...

A graded shuttle run test was used to assess differences in physiological parameters between playing positions in elite female basketball players. Twenty-four female basketball players (8 guards, 8 forwards and 8 centres) who played for the senior national teams of Slovenia and Serbia were tested with the 30-15 intermittent fitness test (30-15IFT)....

The aim of this study was to describe the fitness profiles of senior elite Portuguese rugby players. Forty-six senior Portuguese rugby players, classified as backs (n=22; age 26.2±2.8) and forwards (n=24; age 26.7±2.9) were assessed during physical testing sessions carried out for the Portuguese National rugby team. The body composition, maximum st...

Fencing is one of only a few sports that have featured at every modern Olympic Games. Despite this, there is still much the sport science team does not know regarding competition demands and athlete physical characteristics. This review aims to undertake an analysis of the current literature to identify what is known, and questions that must be ans...

Sport and Disability

To determine bone mineral density (BMD) and the associations among BMD, menstrual history, disordered eating (DE), training history, intentional weight loss (IWL) and rib pain for the first time in female lightweight rowers. 9 lightweight rowing clubs, UK. 29 Caucasian female lightweight rowers volunteered. 21 (12 active, 9 retired) completed the s...

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of a 12 week speed, agility and quickness (SAQ) training program on speed and flexibility in young soccer players. One hundred and thirtytwo soccer players were randomly assigned to experimental (EG ; n = 66, mean ± SD: age: 18.5 ± 0.4 years (range 17–19 years) ; body mass: 71.30 ± 5.93 kg ; statur...

Reasons behind successful team performance were explained through analysing the effects of defensive pressure on basketball shooting performance. Team success, shooting efficiency and defensive opposition were analysed from 3344 shooting attempts with Wilcoxon signed ranks tests, Friedman tests and odds ratio calculations. Results of the analysis i...

No previous research in squash has considered the time between shots or the proximity of the ball to a wall, which are two important variables that influence shot outcomes. The aim of this paper was to analyse shot types to determine the extent to which they are played in different court areas and a more detailed analysis to determine whether the t...

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a 12 week conditioning programme involving speed, agility and quickness (SAQ) training and its effect on agility performance in young soccer players. Soccer players were randomly assigned to two groups: experimental group (EG; n = 66, body mass: 71.3 ± 5.9 kg; body height: 1.77 ± 0.07 m) and...

Previous studies of movement characteristics in tennis have considered the effect of playing surface but have assumed that playing strategies are simply determined by the surface as opposed to being under an individual's control. This study considered the selection of cross court or down the line ground strokes as being indicative of playing strate...

Examining a team's performance from a physical point of view their momentum might indicate unexpected turning points in defeat or success. Physicists describe this value as to require some effort to be started, but also that it is relatively easy to keep it going once a sufficient level is reached (Reed and Hughes, 2006). Unlike football, rugby, ha...

Twenty-four dance couples performing at the 2011 IDSF (International DanceSport Federation) International Slovenia Open were divided into two groups: the first twelve placed couples (top ranked) and the last twelve placed couples (lower ranked). Video recordings were processed automatically using computer vision tracking algorithms under operator s...

Aim: To determine differences in physical activity level and functional fitness between young elderly (60–69 years) and old elderly (70–80 years) people with the hypothesis that an age-related decline would be found. Methods: A total of 1288 participants’ level of physical activity was evaluated using the International Physical Activity Questionnai...

Although paddle is the second most practiced sport in Spain, the scientific knowledge about the players' work-load is still very low. The serve is a critical situation because the team has the opportunity to start the point attacking by approaching the net straight after the serve. However, the distance covered by the serve team still has not been...

Winners and errors have been two of the most studied performance indicators in tennis, contributing to the prediction of match outcome and definition of the playing style of the players. Furthermore, the position occupied by the player on the court has also been shown to be a good indicator of both the final result and style of play. The aim of thi...

Aim: The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between maximal aerobic capacity (VO(2max)) and repeated sprint ability (RSA) in a group of professional soccer players. Methods: Forty-one professional soccer players (age 23 ± 4 yrs, height 180.0 ± 5.3 cm, weight 79.6 ± 5.3 kg) were required to perform tests to assess RSA an...

The so called “hot hand” phenomenon (phrase coined by American basketball fans) refers to the commonly held belief amongst sports fans, coaches and players that sports players can, on occasion, produce sequences of consistently superior (compared to their normal) performance. Gilovich, Vallone and Tversky (1985) first alerted the scientific communi...

Dynamical systems theory describes how behaviours can deviate through a series of states (stable or unstable) before returning to an original stable state. It has been suggested that squash performance exhibits properties akin to a dynamical system and demonstrated that squash experts were able to reliably discriminate weak or strong shots that gav...

Hughes MT, Hughes MD, Williams J, James N, Vuckovic G, Locke D. Performance indicators in rugby union. J. Hum. Sport Exerc. Vol. 7, No. 7, pp. 383-401, 2012. Team performance in rugby has typically been assessed through the comparison of winning and losing teams, however, the distinction between winning and losing was used as the sole independent v...

In most sports, it is found that the important performance indicators (PI's) vary from coach to coach. Therefore, if sets of PI's can be identified and clear operational definitions defined, there is significant scope/benefit for consultancy and research, particularly in commercially orientated sports such as soccer. The aim of this study was to us...

It has been predicted that women marathon runners would run as fast as men by 1998, a prediction that was both incorrect and based on rather dubious logic i.e. that world records would progress in a linear manner. This led to the suggestion that a flattened S shape logistic curve was the best fit for analysing world record times but their predictio...

Csataljay G, James N, Hughes M, Dancs H. Performance differences between winning and losing basketball teams during close, balanced and unbalanced quarters. J. Hum. Sport Exerc. Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 356-364, 2012. Previous studies in basketball performance have tended to assess differences between winners and losers of games. This methodology does no...

Most professional sports teams or individuals use some form of video analysis through a computer and software packages. However there is little research into the efficiency of match analysis systems, furthermore, the areas of human- computer interaction and artificial intelligence in match analysis systems have also been neglected. This paper there...

In all sport there is a varying amount of cheating, however, there has been limited work undertaken in performance analysis of this aspect of sport. This paper developed a generic model that may be used within performance analysis, drawing from work undertaken on the definition of cheating. Using statistics from the International Rugby Board's Game...

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of match location (i.e. home vs. away), match status (i.e. winning vs. drawing vs. losing) and competitive season (i.e. season one vs. season two) upon tactics-related performance indicators of a professional association football team. The Noldus Observer Video Pro 4.1 behavioural measurement p...

The velocities and distances covered by players during competition serve as a basis for planning fitness regimes according to the specific demand of the sport. The techniques used to calculate these movement parameters have ranged from human judgements to technological solutions such as GPS and computer vision. This paper evaluates the accuracy of...

1. Sport and Society 2. Sport Pedagogical and Psychological aspects 3. Research Trends in Adapted Physical Activity. 4. Performance Analysis – Internationa workshop