Effects of proprioceptive training on explosive strenght, aglility and coordination of young rhythmic gymnasts

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of proprioceptive training on explosive strength, agility and coordination in young rhythmic gymnasts. The study was conducted on a sample of 74 healthy girls, aged 7 to 9 years of age who train rhythmic gymnastics. The whole sample was divided into two groups: experimental (43 girls) and control (31 girls). The experimental group had the proprioception training before their regular trainings for 12 weeks (24 trainings), while the control group had only rhythmic gymnastics trainings. Effects of proprioceptive trainings on the examined motor abilities were estimated by two explosive strength tests, three coordination tests and two agility tests. All respondents were tested before the application of the experimental treatment (pre-test) and after its completion (post-test). To examine differences in the achieved results between the initial and final measurement for each group, t-test for dependent samples was used. To determine differences between groups at the initial and final measurement, t-test for independent samples was used. By comparing results from the initial and final measurement, improvement in all tests for the observed abilities was perceived in the experimental group, while improvement in coordination tests and one agility test was noticed in the control group. Testing differences in results between groups in the final measurement showed that there are differed only in agility tests, and in favour of the experimental group. Based on the obtained results, the conclusion was that the application of proprioceptive training in rhythmic gymnasts can contribute to improvement of agility, while in other observed abilities we cannot conclusively claim that improvement was the direct product of proprioceptive training.