Homolateral Hand and Foot Coordination in Trained Older Women

Background: 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. Objective: The aim of the present study was to verify differences in homolateral hand and foot coordination between trained and untrained older women. Methods: 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. Results: 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. Conclusion: 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.