Predictors of Reactive Agility in Early Puberty: A Multiple Regression Gender-Stratified Study

Reactive agility (RAG) is a crucial factor of success in sports, but there are practically no studies dealing with RAG among children. The main aim of this study was to identify predictors of RAG among early pubescent boys and girls. The participants were primary school boys (n = 73) and girls (n = 59) aged 11–12. The criterion variable was the originally developed “Triangle” test of reactive agility (Triangle-RAG). Predictors included anthropometric/body composition indices (body height, seated height, body mass, and body fat percentage) and motor abilities (10 and 20 m sprint, broad jump, squat jump, countermovement jump, drop jump, and two tests of change of direction speed—CODS (Triangle-CODS, and 20 yards)). The results of the univariate analysis showed that anthropometric/body composition indices were not significantly correlated to TRAG (0–4% of the common variance), while all motor abilities were significantly associated with TRAG (7–43% of the common variance) in both genders. Among boys, 64% of the TRAG variance was explained by multiple regression, with TCODS as the only significant predictor. Among girls, multiple regression explained 59% of the TRAG-variance with TCODS, countermovement jump, and drop jump as significant predictors. Differences in multivariate results between genders can be explained by (i) greater involvement in agility-saturated sports (i.e., basketball, tennis, soccer) in boys, and (ii) advanced maturity status in girls. The lack of association between anthropometric/body built and TRAG was influenced by the short duration of the TRAG (3.54 ± 0.4 s). Our findings suggest that pre-pubescent and early pubescent children should be systematically trained on basic motor abilities to achieve fundamentals for further developing RAG. Since in this study we observed predictors including only athletic abilities and anthropometric/body composition, in future studies, other motor abilities, as well as cognitive, perceptual, and decision-making parameters as potential predictors of RAG in children should be investigated.