Relationships between whole body reaction time and the motion-silent period and the action period in jump

Abstract

[Purpose] We divided the jump action into a resting phase and a motion execution phase, so that we could shed light on each phase's relationship with the whole body reaction time in jump. [Subjects and Methods] Whole body reaction of young subjects in their late teens was recorded with a high-speed video camera to identify moving reaction time. [Results] The results revealed a high correlation between jumping reaction time and the light stimulus to movement initiation, and the movement initiation to feet-off. Individual variation existed in neural processing velocity of movement preparation and execution, and the processing velocity was shown to reflect the whole body reaction time in jumping. [Conclusion] The outcome suggests that improvement of body performance can be achieved not only by muscle stretch and elastic energy recruitment training but also by faster neural processing.