Coordination of football players' movements when striking ball:role of visual analyzer

We investigated the characteristics of the vertical stability of footballersin its dependence on the level of sportsmanship. We analyzed the motion of the common centre of gravity when the players strike the ballwith the inside of the foot, the middle part of the instep, the outer side of the foot by football players of different skills. To assess the balancefunction in making a stroke on the ball a stabilography test was used. The results indicate that a qualified athlete in the preparatory phase,keeps the centre of gravity in the original position, after which he moves forward by the path of the stroke and returns. A low-skilled playerin the preparatory phase does move the centre of gravity back. At the time of the stroke the trajectory of the centre of gravity is curved,which significantly reduces the efficiency of movement execution. In the final stage to hold the balance the athlete performs an oscillatorymotion in both directions. When striking the ball highly skilled athletes had a significantly lower offset of the frontal line. When comparingthe offset of sagittal motion and average angular velocity no significant differences between the groups were observed. When the ball wasstricken with the middle part of the instep the rates for frontal and sagittal offset between the athletes of different levels of skills did notdiffer significantly. These results indicate the existence of fundamental differences in the technique of striking the ball performance betweenlow-skilled and skilled players. The differences are related to the technique of different strokes, as well as the nature of the movement ofcentre of gravity of the athlete. To assess the role of the visual analyzer in maintaining balance the Romberg test was used with open andclosed eyes in each of the studied groups. Low-skilled athletes when closing eyes showed an increase of the frontal shift, while thesportsmen of high qualification had negligible changes. in this index. The average velocity of the gravity centre shift increased in the groupof low-skilled players with eyes closed indicating the decrease in stability. An important indicator is the quality of balance function; highlyskilled athletes with closed eyes had a considerably smaller decrease in it than the low-skilled players. Average linear speed with eyesclosed increased in both groups, but for elite athletes these changes are minor, while the low-skilled players expressed them significantly.When comparing the values of the angular velocity during the Romberg test with open and closed eyes the differences were small for boththe groups. Thus, it can be concluded that changes in rates of highly skilled athletes' stabilograms when turning off the visual analyzer areinsignificant, whereas the low-skilled athletes' performance is particularly limited with the abolition of the visual field.

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