Differences in the motor coordination abilities among adolescent gymnasts, swimmers, and ice hockey players

Abstract

Purpose. Motor coordination is proposed to be a relatively stable age-related construct, unlikely to be influenced by aligned experiential factors such as intensive sport-specific training. The purpose of the study is to investigate if there are differences in motor coordination abilities among young artistic gymnasts, swimmers, and ice hockey players. Methods. The participants of the study were 508 female and 258 male adolescents (age, M = 12.80, SD = 1.10) comprising artistic gymnasts (n = 463), swimmers (n = 70), and ice hockey players (n = 233). The KTK-test protocol was used to analyse their gross motor coordination abilities.Results. The results of the study demonstrated that gymnasts scored better than ice hockey players and swimmers in the test of walking backwards along a beam, and better than ice hockey players in total motor coordination, hopping over an obstacle, and the test of moving sideways on wooden boards. However, ice hockey players scored higher than swimmers and gymnasts in the test of jumping from side to side. Subsequently, swimmers obtained better results in the test of moving sideways on wooden boards as compared with ice hockey players. Conclusions. The study results indicate that intensive sport-specific training may extend young athletes' motor coordination characteristics in the ability areas representative of the sport in which they engage.

Effects of judo participation on anthropometric characteristics, motor abilities, and posture in young judo athletes

“…these results are in agreement with previous findings, which however, compared children participating in judo with their non-active peers [6] and with other sports athletes [22]. More importantly, the development of these motor characteristics in children practising judo has been linked to a steadier rate of motor development than that observed in their healthy non-judo peers [9,23]. As both groups of children were considered of healthy weight on the basis of their bMI, these improvements in motor characteristics may be attributed solely to the benefits of judo training.…”

“…these results likely stem from the development of sport-specific skills in children who participate in one sport for a prolonged period of time. In this study, judo participants had regularly practised this discipline for at least 3 years, which could essentially lead to the development of sport-specific characteristics in flexibility, strength, and power [9,14,22,23], whereas ball handling skills are not relevant to judokas' activity.…”

The Effect of Motor Performance on Sportive Performance of Children in Different Sports Branches

“…In another study conducted with children ages 9-11 by Opstoel et al (2015) they classified children selected from 25 different sports branches as dancing, ball games, gymnastics, racket games and swimmers. Opstoel et al (2015) stated that the severity of training was determined not by sports branches but by motor skills.…”

“…This is due to the fact that motor skills and motor performance are powerful indicators of children's health conditions and success in sports (Vandorpe et al, 2012a;Callewaert et al, 2015;Pion et al, 2015). It is evident that there are several factors that affect motor performance, one of which is the participation in sports.…”

“…When literature is examined, only 2 studies examining motor skills of children participating in different sports branches are available. Opstoel et al (2015) identified motor skill differences in dance, ball games, gymnastics, racket games and swimming, and Timo et al (2017) compared to the branches of swimmers, ice hockey and children performing gymnastics.…”