THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POSTURE STABILITY AND ONE-HAND CATCHING

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of posture stability on one-hand catching in skilled adults. Ten female PE major college students participated in the experiment. They practiced the stabilometer task 20 trials a day, 3 days a week for 2 weeks. The balancing time, number of balls caught, as well as the movement kinematics of the pre and post-test data were analyzed. The results show that the time of balance improved through practice, the frequency and the amplitude of the platform changed after practice. The number of balls caught was only perturbed by the stabilometer before practice. Principle component analysis (PCA) on the kinematic data show that the number of components did not decrease after practice, but the content of each component changed through practice. We conclude that postural stability only influences the well-retained motor skills at the beginning of practice; it is the performance of the newly learned skill that suffers from perturbations.