Structural Analysis of Action and Time in Sports: Judo

Judo is an intermittent sport. As such, it is important to characterize the actions involved in combat so that training may be structured in such a way as to simulate competitive demands. However, to do so, an objective notational analysis system is necessary. The aim of the present study was to design a computer program that would aid in the analysis of time structure of specific actions during judo combat and test its inter-evaluator and intra-evaluator reliability. Ten male judokas, divided by class and category, were evaluated during three combats each. The matches were filmed and the evaluators used the computer program Saats™ (Structural Analysis of Action and Time in Sports) to analyze the following actions: break, grip, technique, fall and groundwork. The sequences were characterized by the sum of actions between each break. A total of 276 action sequences were evaluated, with a mean of 11 action sequences per combat, with four on the ground. Two evaluations were carried out by three evaluators for each judo match (inter-evaluator agreement), with only one being an expert in the software used. There was a lack of similarities in the results of only two of the variables (p