COMPARISON OF TRADITIONAL RESISTANCE TRAINING AND FLYWHEEL TRAINING ON AGILITY AND CHANGE-OF-DIRECTION ABILITY IN FOOTBALL PLAYERS

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to investigate and compare the effects of traditional resistance training and flywheel training on agility and change-of-direction ability in football players. The participants were 36 male football players from Chandrakasem Rajabhat University, selected using purposive sampling. They were divided into two groups of 18: the Traditional Resistance Training group and the Flywheel Training group. Group allocation was performed using a matched-pair design based on pre-test Illinois Agility Test times, followed by random assignment. Both groups completed their respective training programs for 8 weeks, twice per week, with each session lasting approximately 60 minutes. Training sessions were conducted prior to regular team practices, while on other days, all participants followed the same routine football training program. Agility and change-of-direction ability were assessed using the Illinois Agility Test and the 505 Agility Test. Data were analyzed using means, standard deviations, paired-sample t-tests, and independent-sample t-tests, with the level of statistical significance set at 0.05. The results revealed that after 8 weeks of training, both groups demonstrated significantly reduced completion times in both the Illinois Agility Test and the 505 Agility Test compared with pre-training values (p < 0.05). Furthermore, between-group comparisons showed that the flywheel training group achieved significantly lower post-training times than the traditional resistance training group in both tests (p < 0.05). These findings indicate that flywheel training is more effective than traditional resistance training for improving agility and change-of-direction performance in football players.