Coordinative abilities

We explain what coordination skills are in physical education, their characteristics and how they are classified.

Coordinative abilities play an important role in the practice of sports.

What are coordination capacities?

In physical education, are known as coordinative capacities to a type of physical abilities or motor of Body human (that is, of their abilities to movement), which have to do with the control and management of movement, such as the coordination, agility and Balance.

They differ from conditional capabilities, which are linked more to the strength, the endurance, speed and elasticity.

Coordinative motor skills are the power of the Central Nervous System (CNS) and its processes of control and regulation of the body, which allow us to face planned motor actions (that is, repetitive, rehearsed) or unforeseen (unprecedented, which require a capacity for adaptation). These coordinative capacities are classified as follows:

  • Coordinative orientation abilities, which allow us to know the position and location of our body at all times and especially when making a movement.
  • Coordinative combination capabilities, which allow us to sequentially or simultaneously integrate movements of a different nature into a single, more complex movement.
  • Coordinative adaptation capacities, which allow us to vary established movement patterns to adapt them to a specific situation or position, that is, they allow us to adapt the movements learned to new situations.
  • Coordinative reaction capacities, which allow us to respond appropriately, proportionally and quickly to an unexpected stimulus.
  • Coordinative balance abilities, which allow us to carry out complex movements with a small support base, or to maintain a position by resisting the action of an external force or influence.
  • Rhythmic coordinative abilities, which allow us to carry out harmonic movements by combining other movements in an appropriate and joint manner.
  • Coordinative abilities of space-time perception, which allow us to incorporate different external objects into the movement of our body, evaluating the speed, distance and weight of each one.

Like the rest of motor skills, coordination skills can be enhanced and strengthened through continuous exercise and practice. However, they have an innate component, that is, characteristic of the characteristics with which we are born.

These capacities play an important role in the practice of sports and make up the basis of the so-called "motor intelligence" of individuals and muscle memory.

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