Approximately two thirds of the total time was comprised
of a side-step movement to change direction and sprint to
the stop gate (response movement time) and tester movement
averaged 28% of the total time. An important finding
was that although decision time was less than 4% of the total
time, the correlation between decision time and total time
was quite high (r = 0.77, p = 0.00). Further, this correlation
with total time was greater than for the response movement
time (r = 0.59) or tester time (r = 0.37), indicating that decision
time was the most influential of the test components
for explaining the variability in total time. This is consistent
with the findings of previous research indicating that the
speed of decision making is important for reactive agility.4,7
It is likely that the individuals who performed well in the
reactive agility test were able to use advanced cues from the
tester’s side-step movements to quickly anticipate the directional
change. This is supported by the finding that five of
the players achieved negative decision times, which indicates