Commentary: Teaching Games of Understanding (TGfU) coaching effects on Heart Rate among Malaysian and Indian Junior Hockey Players

Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) offers tactical-technical instruction is gaining international recognition for its ability to produce intelligent players via a problem-solving approach in game play such as hockey. However the effect of TGfU pedagogical approach through small side game play (SSG) towards physiology components of Heart Rate (HR) still takes a backseat compared to research on tactical decision making and skill execution that has been studied widely. SSG proposed in TGfU approach dwells around duration of game play (load), how fast the SSG game manouvers (intensity) and players cardiovascular fitness can be detected by HR tool and therefore HR crucial to be investigated. This quasi-experimental study investigated the effect of TGfU compared to skill mastery instruction, termed as Skill Drill Technical (SDT), among Malaysian and Indian elite junior hockey players in terms of SSG game play intensity via heart rate (HR) measurement at different points of game play. A total of n = 60 players with an average age of 15 ± 1.03 were selected via simple random technique from both countries involved in this study and assigned equally into groups, with 15 players per group for TGfU and for SDT across Malaysia and India. Gathered data were analysed using the ANOVA and ANCOVA techniques. There was significant higher warm-up HR bpm among players via TGfU compated to SDT across the two countries. Whereas HR bpm immediately after the 5 vs. 5 game play intervention and HR bpm after three minutes’ recovery, Indian players with TGfU recorded a higher and significant difference compared to SDT. However, in contrast, findings indicated no significant difference between these two instruction models among Malaysian player. Therefore, overall findings reiterated that TGfU is a useful approach for game play to enhance intensity and cardiac output through HR bpm measurement. In conclusion, future research can employ together HR and RPM (Borg Scale) or electronic device for more accurate reading coupled 6 sec and 15 sec HR readings. Future study, should too address the effect of TGfU on different variation of small sided game play intensity along skill execution and tactical decision making.