Abstract

This study tried to identify the main variations that influence success in defensive anticipation ad realize a hierarchy of its level of importance, beginning with the opinions of the players themselves.
The study was carried out with a sample of 181 High School and University students, all with sports experience outside school and university, aged between 16 and 20, to whom we gave a questionnaire of 10 items in 6 different categories: the characteristics of stimulus, perceptive motor control, physical condition, tactics, techniques and self-confidence. The students had to put them in order according to the importance they gave to have success in defensive anticipation. The results showed that the variations considered most important were, in first place, tactics followed by perceptive motor control and self control. In general, the variations of an internal nature of changeable character and, therefore, trainable (tactics, perceptive motor control, self confidence and technique) were considered more important with respect to the little or no-at-all trainable variations, such as the external (characteristics of stimulus) or the little changeable internal ones (speed)