COORDINATION

The coordination is the ability to perform a movement in space by synchronously and smoothly combining muscle activations, joint motion, and expressed forces. It is directly connected to the functionality of the central nervous system in organizing motor gestures and significantly determines the quality of movement and, consequently, performance.

Coordination ability is not part of the conditional capacities (strength, speed, mobility, and endurance) that determine the athlete's physical "condition." Instead, it greatly influences the sports gesture: the training of a technical fundamental or a sports action is aimed at achieving the perfect union of muscular actions that have been enhanced through the training of conditional capacities.

The main elements involved in coordination are perceptual abilities and coordination capacities, but cognitive abilities also play a relevant role, manifesting in anticipation, motor imagination, and the level of motor schema development.

Perceptual abilities can be divided into proprioceptive capacities, which gather stimuli from within the organism, and exteroceptive capacities, which signal conditions in the external environment. For the development of the latter, the efficiency of sensory organs such as vision, hearing, tactile organs, but also smell and taste, is crucial.

Coordination capacities are complex and distinguishable in:

- the regulation of reflex movements, instinctive, involuntary, and rapid actions that the body performs in specific circumstances

- eye-hand coordination, which comes into play when coordinating hand movement with information provided by sight

- spatial-temporal orientation, allowing the body to organize actions based on space and time

- balance capabilities, enabling the subject to maintain or recover a stable body position

- rhythmic abilities, making actions, especially cyclic ones like running, more harmonious

- lateralization, the process by which some symmetrical parts of the body specialize to perform different but complementary functions (e.g., one foot kicks the ball, the other stabilizes the body and ensures balance).

Recognizing the importance of coordination in the sports field, OptoJump and Gyko offer numerous protocols that not only allow training but also evaluate coordination through objective data. In running and walking, the combined use of both tools provides indices describing the coordination of the upper part of the trunk relative to the lower part. Coordination capacities can also be monitored through jump protocols, comparing the performance of tests that involve the use of arms with those that do not allow it. Motor coordination is influenced by environmental and psychological situations, so in certain circumstances (excessive noise, psychological tension), an athlete may not be able to perform actions as effectively as they normally would. Hence, training with WITTY SEM, which simulates stress conditions through the combination of cognitive and motor tasks, is useful.