Freestyle gymnastic exercise can be used to assess complex coordination in a variety of sports

Andrea Adorjanne Olajos; Masaki Takeda; Beata Dobay; Zsolt Radak; Erika Koltai

doi:10.1016/j.jesf.2019.11.002

Freestyle gymnastic exercise can be used to assess complex coordination in a variety of sports

J Exerc Sci Fit. 2020 May;18(2):47-56. doi: 10.1016/j.jesf.2019.11.002. Epub 2019 Nov 18.

Authors

Andrea Adorjanne Olajos¹, Masaki Takeda², Beata Dobay³, Zsolt Radak⁴, Erika Koltai⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Gymnastics, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Dance and Aerobics, University of Physical Education, Budapest, Hungary.
² Faculty of Health and Sports Science, Doshisha University, Kyotanabe, Japan.
³ Janos Selye University, Faculty of Education, Department of Physical Education, Slovakia.
⁴ Research Center for Molecular Exercise Science, University of Physical Education, Budapest, Hungary.

Abstract

Objective: The assessment of motor coordination is a very complex process and demonstrates a high degree of sport specificity. There are a limited number of tests, if any, where results correlate with the success rate of athletes in different sports.

Methods: Free style gymnastic exercise (FSGE) and coordination ball dribbling exercise (CBDE) were used to see whether the execution quality of these tests is related to the quality of athletes from team handball, water polo, kayak, rhythmical gymnastics (RG) and aerobics (222 athletes - 75 male, 147 female; 23 non-athletes - 9 male, 14 female).

Results: FSGE results related to the quality of performance in all sports (r = -0.232, p < 0.01 in handball, water polo, kayak and r = -0.26, p < 0.05 in aerobics and RG), while CBDE did not. Older players had higher ranking as they had more time to be successful at their sport (r = -0.498, p < 0.01 in handball, water polo, kayak; r = -0.298, p < 0.05 in aerobics and RG). The scores of FSGE were independent from the age and gender of the subjects.

Conclusions: The main findings were: (i) that athletes did significantly better than the controls in both tests; (ii) RG and aerobics athletes did better on the FSGE than handball, water polo players and kayakers; (iii) handball players did better than kayakers, RG and aerobics athletes on the CBDE test; and (iv) better ranked athletes performed better on the FGSE test. Therefore, FSGE test appears to be a reliable test to assess coordination in variety of sport and different levels of sport performance.

Keywords: Aerobics; Ball games; Motor coordination; Rhythmic gymnastics; Sport performance.