Racket sports as badminton have different task constraints than team sports. When played as doubles, both players need to coordinate to each other to keep an interpersonal distance that ‘fill’ the court decreasing the odds of the opponent double to score. When this coordination state was broken due to a behavioural perturbation, the double undergoes a behavioural instability where one double may take advantage over the opponent with the former aiming to recover the behavioural stability. To keep this stability, it is assumed that the visual coupling remains as the medium that may support the existence of an interpersonal synergy between the two players in the court. The aim of this study is to analyse if badminton doubles form interpersonal synergies during competitive rallies. For that purpose, we used the Uncontrolled Manifold Hypothesis (UCM) to identify interpersonal synergies that are formed between the players of each double [1].
4 badminton male players 23-28 years old were analysed in a simulated competitive match with 74 rallies. Positional data were collected using inertial measurement devices (20Hz) WIMUPROAitor (RealTrack Systems, Almeria, Spain). Player’s interpersonal distance was selected as a performance variable and the player’s velocities as task relevant elements.
Results show that double 1 obtained higher values of interpersonal synergies (see Table 1). Interpersonal synergies (UCM values above 1) were found in 55,41 % of the rallies performed by double 1 and in 50% of the rallies performed by double 2. These data unravel the existence of interpersonal synergies in badminton doubles. This means that the adjustments of player’s velocity stabilize the interpersonal distance within the desirable values and consequently synergies are formed. Based on these results we may suggest that the perceptive (visual) attunement to the teammate changes in velocity displacement seems crucial to create an interpersonal synergy in badminton doubles.
