Upper-body strength and power assessment in women using a chest pass

Finding assessment methods that are reliable, valid, and easy to administer is important, especially when assessing large numbers of athletes. The purpose of this research therefore was to investigate whether assessment of the upper body using the chest pass throw was significantly related to strength and power as measured using the bench press. The chest pass distance of 12 experienced netball players was measured; thereafter, their bench press I repetition maximum and various kinematic and kinetic variables were calculated from a 10-kg bench press throw performed on an instrumented Smith machine. Pearson correlation coefficients were used to establish the relationship between the strength/power variables and the chest pass. Of the kinematic and kinetic variables calculated from the bench press throws, impulse and power were the variables most highly correlated to chest pass distance (r = 0.775-0.810), whereas the measures of initial force production (F-30ms and F-100ms) were the lowest (r = 0.082-0.105). Four variables had a greater than 50% (R-2) shared variance with the netball chest pass-impulse, peak power, mean power and maximal strength. Power and impulse are strong predictors of chest pass performance; however, the value of the chest pass as an assessment tool to map strength and power changes in an athlete needs to be investigated using a training study approach.