Individualistic Aptitude and Biofeedback on Improvement of Coordination in Young Athletes

Abstract

Sports cognition encompasses the primary affective-motivational aspect related to primordial fight-or flight responses, which are essentially the precursors for both the BAS (behavioural activation system - the reward system) and BIS (behavioural inhibition system- the punishment or fear-eliciting system). In Asian and especially South-Asian perspective, impulsivity and aggressive out-bursts are by and large considered as conduct disorders, thus more acceptable docile tendency in children and pre-adolescent lead them to a cognitive-motivational make-up of BIS orientation. With such a background the present study was carried out to identify the extent of cognitive-affective competence of the skilled competitive players in enhancing bilateral motor coordination required for high sport performance. Eighty-one high performing female ball game players matched with their performance-specific motor coordination ability, were categorised into three differential groups based on their psychobiological competence, viz; Group A- consisted of twenty-seven players diagnosed with moderate level of sympathovagal balance; Group B (N = 27) – consisted of twenty-seven players diagnosed with discordant sympathovagal balance, while Group C (n = 27) were identified as having high sympathovagal balance. Thereafter, players of Group B & C were introduced to training of skin-conductance biofeedback tailored for musculoskeletal enhancement (20 min.s/ day; three days/ week for twelve weeks). Mid-term analyses of motor coordination as well as the post-intervention analyses (carried out after the twelfth week) revealed that players having higher sympathovagal balance had higher efficiency in modulation of muscle tension as well as in perceptual –motor adaptation, which have prompted them to have enhanced bilateral and visual-motor coordination compared to their counterparts.

Keywords

• Biofeedback
• Motor Coordination
• Sport performance