Arnold Huurnink

Chapter 1 1 8 1. Standing balance in sports In sports, testing of functional performance of players is commonly applied, for instance to evaluate training progress, rehabilitation progress, or to assess qualities of a player. All this data is used to optimize the sport performance of a player or a team, and to minimize the risk and burden of injuries. Awide range of functional determinants can be considered important for sports performance. Therefore, evaluated qualities of a player commonly encompass physiological characteristics (e.g., aerobic and anaerobic capacity), general motor abilities (e.g., flexibility, speed, agility, strength), sport specific technical skills, and sport-specific perceptual-cognitive skills (e.g., decision making) [1–5]. In addition to these qualities, a possibly important general motor ability is the total body sensorimotor control [6,7]. However, assessments of sensorimotor control are not commonly applied during monitoring of athletes. The sensorimotor control system relies on feedback mechanisms to accurately coordinate the timing andmagnitude of correctivemotor actions [8,16].The coordinationof corrective motor actions is considered particularly important to control the body during demanding, rapid or unexpected movement [8], to protect joint ligaments [6,9,10] and to avoid traumatic injury in sports [11]. Therefore, sensorimotor training is an important aspect of standard training and warming up routines in athletes [12–14] and of rehabilitation after injuries such as ankle sprains and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) ruptures [9,10,15]. Total body sensorimotor control is the result of continuous interaction of sensory reception (i.e., visual, vestibular, proprioceptive), central nervous system (CNS) processing, movement planning, and peripheral motor output (Figure 1) [6]. The model shown in Figure 1 implies that many aspects of the control system can result in limitations of the motor output. Given that the motor output is the net result of the different aspects of the control system, it is also to some extent possible that specific impairments are compensated by other parts of the system. Therefore, tests at the level of the motor output aim to assess the performance of the entire sensorimotor control system. Figure 1 | Adapted fromWitchalls et al. (2012). Model of sensorimotor control.