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Lateral preference in grappling situations
- Florian Loffing
- Ole Deeken
- Jörg Schorer
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Description: Laterality is considered relevant to performance in combat sports and particular emphasis has been placed on fighters’ handedness and combat stance. Such approach, however, may fall too short to understand the role of lateral preference in sports where fighters are allowed to use their hands and feet standing and on the ground. In this project we referred to the domain of grappling sports (i) to estimate, at the group-level, lateral preference in selected combat situations and (ii) to test for an association between those preferences and common measures of handedness and footedness. To this end, in an online questionnaire 135 experienced grapplers indicated their lateral preference for combat situations and common tasks using an adapted version of the Lateral Preference Inventory. Lateral preference was revealed in 12 out of 18 combat situations at the group-level and association between footedness and grappling-specific lateral preference was indicated in only three out of 36 situations (no association with handedness at all). Implications for the assessment of lateral preference in combat sports and the use of item-specific terminology in this context are discussed. ---------------- The data provided here belong to the following journal article: Loffing, F., Deeken, O., & Schorer, J. (2023). Lateral preference in complex combat situations: Prevalence and relationship with general measures of hand and foot preference. Laterality: Asymmetries of Brain, Behaviour, and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1080/1357650X.2023.2254004