Investigation of the relationship of cognitive performance, visual reaction time and agility parameters on football players

The research aims to examine the relationship between cognitive performance, visual reaction time and agility parameters on football players. Twenty- five football players with an average age of 18-20 years (18.16 ± 0.68), who have been active for at least five years and who are in the Turkish U19 Super League participated in the study from the Turkish U19 Super League participated. Body composition (BODPOD), agility (Illinois test), visual reaction time (Witty Sem Microgate) and cognitive performance (Stroop Test) of the football players were measured. SPSS v23 was used in the analysis of the data and the significance level was taken as p<0.05. The relationship between normally distributed data was examined with the Pearson Correlation Coefficient. According to the analysis of the data a significant positive correlation was found between cognitive performance and visual reaction time on football players. When the relationship between cognitive performance and agility parameter was examined, no significant relationship was found between the two concepts. There was a significant correlation and a negative correlation between visual reaction time and agility parameters. As a result, when height, body mass index and body fat ratio values increase on football players, visual reaction time increases and performance decreases. Likewise, when the body fat ratio increases, agility time increases and performance decreases.