Practicing timing, rhythmicity can hone golfers, footballers' skills: Research

A Swedish researcher has conducted a research and found that practicing ones timing and rhythmicity can make one more precise and stable golfer or football player.

Umea researcher Marius Sommer found the result after taking experienced athletes perform specific rhythmic movements in time to a metronome for four weeks.

Sommer's results show that improved motor timings of both female elite level soccer players and experienced male golfers leads to improved outcome accuracy, with associated changes in motor performance, as well as in the brain's activity patterns related to these performances.

Sommer said that the results are particularly exciting because both practitioners and coaches in most sports stress on the importance of 'timing', but there are still a few previous scholarly studies on the relationship between motor timing and athletic performance.

According to the research the training that Sommer's thesis examines is different from the traditional sport-specific exercises that athletes normally perform, as he used a difital metronome for four weeks to train golfers and soccer players on their timing and rhythmicity using various non-sport specific rhythmic movements.

The four-week rhythmic and timing training had a positive effect on how well the golfers and soccer players could hit predefined targets and the stability of their performance, despite the participants' vast experience.

Sommer has pointed out through his research that one can develop and train the ability to organize motor actions in time and space through sport specific training, but it is not enough for motor precision, which also requires optimal timing.