Motor skills

Coordination, agility, and motor skills are complex aspects of normal function requiring appropriate contraction at the most opportune time and with the appropriate intensity. An athlete needs coordination, agility, and motor skills to transform strength, flexibility, and endurance into full-speed performance. This is especially important for an injured athlete. If he or she does not regain or improve coordination and agility, their performance is hampered and may in itself lead to further injury. Repetition and practice are important to learning motor skills. Regular motions that are consciously controlled develop into automatic reactions via motor learning. This control is possible because of the constant repetition and reinforcements of a particular skill. To acquire these automatic reactions, one needs an intact and functional neuromuscular system. This system is disturbed with injury; therefore decreases in performance will occur, leading to injury susceptibility. The functional progression can be used to minimize the loss of normal neuromuscular control by providing exercises that stress proprioception, motor-skill integration, and proper timing. The functional progression is indicated for this improvement in agility and skill because of the constant repetition of sport-specific motor skills, use of sensory cues, and progressive increases in activity level. These are all components or general principles for enhancing coordination. The practice variability seen with the functional progression allows athletes to relearn the various aspects of their sport that they may encounter in competition.

Traditional exercise programs cannot retrain the athlete to meet the demands of the sport because they lack the coordination and agility portion of the rehabilitation process. Increases in strength, endurance, and flexibility are definitely needed for safe and effective return to play, but without the neuromuscular coordination to integrate these aspects into proper function, little performance enhancement can occur. For this reason, functional progressions should become an integral part of the long-term rehabilitation stage so that each athlete receives every opportunity to get back in the game with preinjury status restored as much as possible.

Timed exercise. The athlete jumps side to side over a ball or other obstacle in a timed exercise.

Functional strengthening of upper extremity. Surgical tubing, THERABAND, or wall pulleys may be used in a D2 pattern for this activity.

Hop tests. A, In the timed hop test, time required to cover a б-meter distance is measured in seconds. B, The single hop for distance test measures the distance covered in a single hop. Both tests use a percentage of the injured leg compared to the uninjured leg.	Cocontraction test. The athlete moves in a sidestep or shuffle fashion around the periphery of a semicircle with resistance applied using surgical tubing.

4.1. Read and translate a supplementary text “Motor Skills”.

4.2. Discuss the text in class.