Aggression Dimensions Among Athletes Practising Martial Arts and Combat Sports

Purpose: The main aim of the research was to analyse aggression dimensions among athletes practising martial arts and combat sports.

Material and Methods: There were 219 respondents. The Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ) in the Polish adaptation by Siekierka was applied.

Results: Martial arts apprentices turned out to present a statistically significantly lower level of hostility (p < 0.001) and of the general aggression index (p = 0.04) than combat sports athletes. It turned out that lower level of aggression was noted in female participants (physical aggression (p < 0.001), verbal aggression (p = 0.004), hostility (p < 0.001), and the general aggression index (p < 0.001). Analysis revealed that the training experience and the training rank did not differentiated the level of the respondents' particular aggression dimensions.

Conclusions: It would be advisable to perform parallel analyses in other areas of Poland and take into account the respondents' education and place of residence.

Intelligent Framework for Learning Physics with Aikido (Martial Art) and Registered Sensors

Physics is considered a tough academic subject by learners. To leverage engagement in the learning of this STEM area, teachers try to come up with creative ideas about the design of their classroom lessons. Sports-related activities can foster intuitive knowledge about physics (gravity, speed, acceleration, etc.). In this context, martial arts also provide a novel way of visualizing these ideas when performing the predefined motions needed to master the associated techniques. The recent availability of cheap monitoring hardware (accelerometers, cameras, etc.) allows an easy tracking of the aforementioned movements, which in the case of aikido, usually involve genuine circular motions. In this paper, we begin by reporting a user study among high-school students showing that the physics concept of moment of inertia can be understood by watching live exhibitions of specific aikido techniques. Based on these findings, we later present Phy + Aik, a tool for educators that enables the production of innovative visual educational material consisting of high-quality videos (and live demonstrations) synchronized/tagged with the inertial data collected by sensors and visual tracking devices. We think that a similar approach, where sensors are automatically registered within an intelligent framework, can be explored to teach other difficult-to-learn STEM concepts.