Coordination of movements

In the article “Coordination of movements” you will learn about the process of interaction of multiple body systems, their characteristics, and how it affects athletic performance.

How do the greatest soccer players on the planet manage to calculate in hundredths of a second and strike precisely into the nine? How many revolutions in flight can a skater’s vestibular apparatus withstand?

It seems that these people have subjugated the force of gravity, and made the world live according to other physical laws. Sports geniuses, their main trump card is exceptional coordination of movements.

Coordination of movements is the process of coordinating the activity of muscles aimed at solving motor tasks. Coordination is the interaction of multiple body systems, visual, vestibular, and motor systems. It is good muscle memory, it is the rapid transfer of impulses from the brain to the muscles, as well as the ability to adapt quickly to external stimuli.

Coordination of movements depends directly on the speed of command transmission from the brain to the muscles. When we barely notice a movement, information about it is transmitted to the motor nerve cell of the spinal cord.

Then, through a special conductive channel, the axon, to the muscle. When the signal comes, the muscle contracts. It is crucial that all fibers involved in the motor reaction react simultaneously.

The coordinated work of the muscles is only one of the options necessary for the perfect coordination of movements. What else is needed? Of course, muscle memory. Athletes develop it during training.

In skiing, on the bobsleigh track, in order to show a great result it is necessary to memorize the track to the millimeter, to learn by heart the turns, the terrain. Before the responsible start, the participants are given a few days to do it.

Not only the brain memorizes the track, but also the muscles of the athlete. And the more accurately they are coordinated, the higher the result. A great example of muscle memory can be the story of a new ball in the NBA.

In 2006, for the first time in basketball history a fully synthetic tool appeared on the floor, and the main claim to the high-tech novelty was unusual handling. Unlike traditional leather ball, the composite ball did not deform during the bounce and behaved absolutely differently during the game.

Surprisingly, super-coordinated athletes, used to all the metamorphosis of the game, could not cope with such a surprise. This ball is connected to the loudest scandal in the history of the NBA; the big-name athletes of the league did not want to accept it.

The brain is millions of neurons. When a person performs a movement, a stable connection is formed between the neurons – a stereotype. If the movement is memorized, the signal bypasses the stage of awareness, and the person performs the movement automatically.

For this to happen, the action has to be repeated 800 to 1000 times. This principle lies in the training in all sports disciplines requiring high coordination of movements. Athletes are reverent about their equipment for a reason. For example, in rhythmic gymnastics they never change it before a competition.

Tennis players literally pray for their racquet, and in playing sports, it usually takes at least a year between the time they change the official competition ball and the beginning of its use on world courts.

Muscle memory and speed of intermuscular impulse transmission are not the only components of movement coordination. Its other most important component is the vestibular apparatus.

In 1842, Ernest Mach, an Austrian scientist, was riding a train. After falling asleep for a few minutes, he noticed that even with his eyes closed he could feel when and where the train was turning. Then Dr. Mach suggested that there must be a special sensor of inertial forces in the human body, which registers the movement of the body in space. So the vestibular apparatus was discovered.

In order to check the vestibular apparatus it is enough to twist a person around his axis for 15 seconds and then check whether the test person is able to walk in a straight line. As a rule, an untrained person is lost in space after spinning.

Athletes in training develop spatial perception within a certain plane. For example, skaters perform spins in the horizontal plane. If spins were moved to the vertical plane, the skater would have balance problems.

In addition to internal, physiological factors, external circumstances can influence coordination of movements. For example, the roar of the stadium. The loudest sound produced by fans was recorded in 2007 at a stadium in Turkey – 132 decibels. For comparison, the noise of an airplane taking off is about 130 dB, and 135 dB can cause hearing impairment.

To eliminate the external factor, it is necessary that the athlete’s full attention be absorbed in the action being performed. To concentrate, the cerebral cortex must, in fact, block the recognition of signals by other parts of the brain, such as the senses of smell and hearing.

Add to this muscle memory, accumulated over years of training, lightning-fast intermuscular reactions, providing filigree interaction of all parts of the body, a perfect vestibular apparatus, and here it is – perfect coordination of movements.

In principle, anyone is capable of becoming more coordinated. But it’s not enough to be Shaquille O’Neal or Lionel Massey, you have to be born a sports superstar.

Coordination of human movements

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