Motor skills transfer from gymnastics to swimming.
99 adult specialists in combat sports (n = 21), team sports (n = 37), gymnastics (n = 22), and swimming (n = 19) (M age = 20 yr., SD = 2; 64 young men, 35 young women) performed three 25-m swimming tasks whilst "blindfolded" by opaque goggles: front crawl in a straight line, dolphin-kicking on the back, and dolphin-kicking on the front. Even though the gymnasts (like the swimmers) were at ease in all 3 situations, the motor skills of the "motor interaction" specialists (team sports, combat sports) put the latter at a disadvantage. The similarities between the gymnasts' and swimmers' behavior (confirmed using factorial correspondence analysis with the TRIDEUX program) are undoubtedly related to the fact that these sportspersons essentially live in the same sensory space in their respective practices: exteroceptive information is subordinated by proprioceptive information. In contrast, the 99 subjects' timed freestyle swimming performances over 75 m depended so much on their physical and anthropometric qualities that the results were independent of the sporting specialties for the novice swimmers. Hence, the mere fact that the 22 gymnasts, who tended to be shorter, with a higher proportion of women, were more at ease in the water did not turn them into great performers.
Collard
L
L
University of Caen.
Oboeuf
A
A
Ahmaidi
S
S
D000328:Adult; D000886:Anthropometry; D054874:Athletic Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D001827:Body Height / Q000502:physiology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006173:Gymnastics / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007699:Kinesthesis / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D011434:Proprioception / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012737:Sex Factors; D013550:Swimming / Q000502:physiology*; D014163:Transfer, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*