The Crossover Effects of Visuomotor Task Complexity in Training Reactive Agility of Ball Sports Athletes

Visuomotor reaction is a pivotal skill for athletes in ball sports. Training of such ability involves complex processing and coordination between cognitive functions and motor execution. Given the scattered literature on the topic related to task complexity, our study aimed to investigate the skill transfer effect among visuomotor tasks with different levels of complexity. Twenty-eight amateur ball players, with the mean age of 22.4 years old (SD = 1.9), were recruited and randomly assigned to either a simple or a complex visuomotor task intervention group, comprising bi-directional and multi-directional visuomotor training, respectively. Our study involved a four-week visuomotor agility training program. Visuomotor reaction times were recorded and analysed before and after the four-week intervention. The results demonstrated that both simple (F = 73.912; p < 0.01; ηp² = 0.745) and complex (F = 80.6; p < 0.001; ηp² = 0.762) visuomotor training were effective in enhancing participants' visuomotor performance at both levels of task complexity. The crossover effect of complex visuomotor training resulted in substantial improvement in both simple and complex visuomotor reaction time, suggesting that implementing complex visuomotor training could be more effective than a simple visuomotor training approach. These findings demonstrate the transferable effects associated with complex visuomotor agility training, highlighting its potential to enhance reactive agility across different levels of task complexity.