Enhancing reactive agility in soccer: The impact of stroboscopic eyewear during warm-up across fatigued and non-fatigued conditions

Abstract

Although prolonged training with stroboscopic eyewear has demonstrated potential for enhancing visuomotor skills, the acute effects of stroboscopic stimulation are not well understood. The aim of the study was to investigate the short-term effects of stroboscopic exposure during the ball-specific phase of soccer warm-up on agility performance in preplanned and unpredictable (RA) tasks. Also, these effects were examined both in tasks involving ball dribbling and without the ball, as well as under fatigued and non-fatigued conditions. Twenty-two male soccer players participated in three sessions: a familiarization session and two experimental sessions, one with and one without stroboscopic exposure during the warm-up. RA was assessed before and after each session using the 10-repetition Illinois Agility Test, with and without ball control. Results showed that stroboscopic exposure significantly enhanced RA performance in tasks involving ball dribbling (p < 0.001, effect size (ES) = 0.57), and these effects were maintained under fatigued conditions (p = 0.007, ES = 0.39). However, there were no significant improvements in RA without the ball (p > 0.05). Exercise-induced fatigue reduced RA performance in both conditions (F = 28.2; p < 0.001), regardless of warm-up type (F = 0.5; p = 0.484). Additionally, stroboscopic exposure did not significantly affect the changes of direction speed performance in the Illinois Agility Test (F = 0.5; p = 0.479). These findings suggest that integrating stroboscopic eyewear into the ball-specific phase of soccer warm-ups effectively improves RA performance in tasks involving dribbling under both non-fatigued and fatigued conditions. The effectiveness of acute stroboscopic stimulation is closely related to the specificity of the tasks in which it is applied. These insights could benefit training across various sports, encouraging coaches to adopt this approach to enhance player preparation before both training and competitions.