Investigation of the effect of 8-week handball basic technical training applied to children aged 8-10 on reaction time

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of 8-week handball basic technical training applied to children aged 8-10 on reaction time. A total of 60 volunteer children, 30 volunteer girls and 30 volunteer boys, aged 8-10 years, who did not play sports before and did not have any health problems, participated in the study. Handball basic technical training was given to 30 children in the randomly selected experimental group, 3 days a week for 8 weeks. In the study, the effect of handball basic technical training for 8 weeks was investigated according to the pre-test and post-test results of the reaction times of the children. SPSS 26.0 package program was used in the analysis of the data. In analysis; Wilcoxon test was used to determine the differences between arithmetic mean, standard deviation and pre-test and post-test results. According to the results of the statistical analysis, it was determined that the handball basic technical training applied for 8 weeks significantly improved the DG reaction time averages in the posttest. The mean DG reaction time was 0.91 in the pre-test; 0.74 in the last test; The improvement between the pre-test and the post-test was found to be 18.68%. In cases where children's reaction times are desired to be improved, it may be recommended to apply handball basic technical training along with other factors. Keywords: Handball, reaction time