Assessing coordination in open- and closed-skill sports - martial artists and sprint athletes
Assessing coordination in open- and closed-skill sports - martial artists and sprint athletes

Summary/Abstract: For any sporting activity to be effective, movement coordination is essential. The purpose of this research was to explore the strengths and weaknesses of male athletes practicing open- and closed-skill sports, in terms of intersegmental coordination. It also examined differences related to the type of sport and athletes' performance, based on the results for intersegmental coordination results. The study involved 49 male athletes, some practicing martial arts (boxing and jiu-jitsu) and some practicing sprinting (100 meters). The RCMV computerized test, developed by the Romanian company RQ Plus, was used to assess intersegmental coordination. First, the study highlighted strengths and weaknesses in terms of intersegmental coordination in the case of the investigated open- and closed-skills sports (using one-sample t-test). Next, sport-related differences in coordination were explored, with the Kruskal-Wallis test, and the Dwass-Steel-Critchlow-Fligner post-hoc test for multiple comparisons. Not least, the study assessed whether athletes’ results for intersegmental coordination were significantly related to their sports performance. The findings revealed that boxing athletes had better scores in choice reaction time than sprint athletes, and also outperformed male jiu-jitsu athletes in terms of resistance to disruptive factors in tasks requiring coordination. However, sprint athletes made significantly fewer errors when coordinating their movements quickly and steadily, compared to both boxing and jiu-jitsu athletes. Learning capacity or the coordination of upper and lower limbs in new, unfamiliar conditions was found to be essential for martial arts athletes, aiming for high sports performances.

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