Postural trials: expertise in rhythmic gymnastics increases control in lateral directions

Abstract

The first aim of this paper was to investigate if expertise in rhythmic gymnastics influences postural performance even in an easy non-specific task such as bipedal posture. Rhythmic gymnastics is a unique female sport which encompasses aspects of both artistic gymnastics and ballet and includes the use of a small apparatus (rope, hoop, ball, clubs and ribbon). Most previous studies have shown that expertise achieved by artistic gymnasts and dancers improves postural steadiness only in the situations for which those athletes are trained. Literature has not yet compared rhythmic gymnasts to other athletes in terms of their postural strategies. Hence, the study presented herein tested a group of high level rhythmic gymnasts and a group of female university students, trained in other sports, in the bipedal posture under eyes open and closed conditions. A force platform was used to record body sway. (1) Distance from the centre of sway, (2) lateral and (3) antero-posterior displacements were analyzed in time and frequency domains. Comparing the two groups, it was found that rhythmic gymnasts had better strategies than students in simple postural tasks, especially in lateral directions and in the period from 0.05 to 2 s. The most interesting finding in this study is that rhythmic gymnastics training seems to have a direct effect on the ability to maintain bipedal posture, which may confirm the "transfer" hypothesis of rhythmic gymnastics expertise to bipedal postural sway, especially in medio-lateral displacements. This finding has never been reported in previous studies on artistic gymnasts and ballet dancers. Furthermore, the present study confirmed the visual dependence of all the athletes, irrespective of their disciplines, in their postural trials.

Balance Ability and Athletic Performance

“…When analyzing the comparative studies it needs to be noted that gymnasts tend to be shorter and lighter than other athletes and stature and body mass may influence balance ability [15] and normalizing balance scores relative to height or limb length should be considered when comparing groups with notable differences in stature or body mass [13] but this isn't always done. [24] When compared to other specific athletes, gymnasts were found to have superior stabilometer bipedal dynamic balance to soccer players and swimmers. [15] The other study [13] using Balance Error Scoring System (BESS) and SEBT found no difference in static or dynamic balance when compared to soccer players but gymnasts had superior static balance to basketballers.…”

“…The balance ability of gymnasts has mostly been compared to active control subjects [4,9,15,[21][22][23][24] , while two studies have compared them to other specific athletes. [13,15] Majority of studies reported some differences in balance ability; the one study that didn't [21] had the smallest sample size and might have been underpowered to detect statistical differences.…”

“…Overall, it was found that gymnasts were equal to or out-performed non-gymnasts. When the balance test duration exceeded 20s, gymnasts did better than non-gymnasts [4,9,15,[22][23][24] but not when the test was 20s or less. [13,21] This result is a little surprising considering that gymnasts don't maintain static postures for much more than 2s during their routines.…”

“…Gymnasts tended to have superior static unipedal balance [9,13,22] , superior bipedal dynamic balance [4,15] but not static bipedal balance. [9,13,21,24] The ability to maintain balance is likely to be specific to the task and possibly not a general trait. Unipedal balance may be considered difficult and specific to gymnasts; female gymnasts often practice unipedal balance skills on the balance beam while the floor routine of male gymnasts requires unipedal stability.…”

Postural ability reflects the athletic skill level of surfers

“…Training in motor skills requiring a fine postural control can improve adaptive postural control (Vuillerme et al 2001;Calavalle et al 2008;Lamoth et al 2009). Training of each of the levels of the sensory-motor chain (i.e., somatosensoric, vestibular and visual) improves balance control in complex conditions (i.e., with sensory deprivation) indicating a positive effect of training on sensorimotor adaptability (Perrin et al 2002).…”