The present research was carried out with a view to assess the change, if any, on
basketball performance, psycho-physiological responses and physical fitness of state
level basketball players due to two training interventions of Aqua and Yoga. Parallel
group method of experimental design was used in the present study. 90 Male state
level basketball players aged between 16-20 years had been selected for the study and
divided in three groups, group A (Yoga), group B (Aqua), and group C (control) by
using the purposive sampling method. Each group consists of 30 samples. The
training programme was of 16 weeks only. The researcher had conducted the pre-test
and post test of the selected parameters for basketball players, such as basketball skill
test Performance (Johnson Basketball Skill Test Battery), AAHPER Youth Fitness
Test Battery, Psychological (Cattle's 16 PF test), Physiological tests (Blood pressure,
Heart rate pulse rate, Vo2 max) were conducted. As per nature of the study One Way
ANOVA followed by Scheffe's post hoc test was used to identify the effect of two
training method on different dependent variables. The present results indicated that
Yoga and Aqua exercises contributes equally to improve personality of basketball
players. Yoga improves the performance of basketball field goal skill and dribbling
skill better than aqua. Yoga helps better for fitness performance to improve
abdominal muscles strength and upper body strength compared to Aqua exercises.
Aqua reduces systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, and
increases VO2 Max, which indicates that Aqua improves physiological efficiency of
basketball players than yoga group. Thus, both Aqua and Yoga activities are
complimentary to each other to improve the performance and almost all the selected
psycho-Physiological variables in basketball players. The study would make
significant contributions to improve the performance of Basketball players to reach at
an optimal level not only on the physical fitness, but also psychological fitness, and
physiological functions towards health of the basketball players by using Aqua &
Yoga training programme.
