Examining of Reaction Time of Professional Soccer Players according to Their Playing Positions

The purpose of this study was to examine the reaction time (visual and auditory) of professional soccer players according to their playing positions. In this research the experimental group consisted of 84 volunteer athletes whose ages are 24.5±3.31, heights are 176.5±5.6 cm, body weights are 73.4±4.6 kg. Newtest 1000 Reaction time device was used for measuring visual and auditory reaction time. One- way ANOVA test was run to analyze group differences and Tukey HSD test was used to identify which groups make these differences. The results of the research, there were significant differences between reaction time, height and weight when compared of soccer players’ height, weight, body mass index, and reaction time according to their playing positions (p 0.05). In conclusion, reaction time, which is one of the determinants of performance in today’s football, results revealed that there was a significant difference in visual and audio reaction time scores between goalkeepers and the players from other positions in the favor of goalkeepers. Position specific training might be the reason for this significant difference.