Homolateral hand and foot coordination in trained older women

Age-related deterioration in homolateral hand and foot coordination might be due to the combined effects of aging and a sedentary lifestyle. Unfortunately, there is a lack of information regarding the effects of training programs on coordinated inter-limb behavior with advancing age.

The aim of the present study was to verify differences in homolateral hand and foot coordination between trained and untrained older women.

Fifteen sedentary older women were matched in age (61-70 years) with 15 older women who had trained for at least 7 years with 3 one-hour sessions/week of rhythmic gymnastics. The subjects performed simultaneous flexions and extensions of the homolateral wrist and ankle in the sagittal plane at a 1:1 ratio. Two homolateral conditions (preferred and non-preferred limbs) were tested in two coordination modes: in-phase (isodirectional) and anti-phase (non-isodirectional) at three test frequencies (80, 120, and 180 bpm, respectively). The time of correct execution within a maximum of 60 s was recorded for each test condition.

Sedentary older women maintained the required movements for a shorter time than older gymnasts, especially with increasing execution frequency and in the anti-phase condition. Older gymnasts showed no negative effects of increasing frequency on coordination performance in the in-phase mode, and frequency-related performance decrements of lower magnitude than sedentary older women in the anti-phase mode.

The present results indicate that the beneficial effects of rhythm-based training can be better understood when both the spatial and temporal constraints of the inter-limb coordination performance are considered. In fact, trained women largely succeeded in maintaining temporal constraints of in-phase inter-limb coordination even at the highest execution frequency, whereas sedentary women performed worse than trained women already at the lowest frequency. Furthermore, only trained women still succeeded in the anti-phase conditions. Thus, it appears that regular and prolonged practice of rhythmic gymnastics enhances inter-limb performance over both a sedentary lifestyle as well as ageing.