5. Inter-Muscular Coordination
COORDINATION INTER-MUSCULAR
What Is It?
During any athletic activity, your muscles work in a joint and synchronized way. Different muscles cooperate in muscle chains to produce maximal power. If only one muscle worked by itself, no movement could be executed.
Greater coordination between the muscles that form these chains will enhance the quality of movement, meaning greater precision and efficiency when performing an action.
How do we train it?
There are several ways and materials that can train Inter-Muscular Coordination (I.M.C). The most common tool to exercise I.M.C is the coordination ladder. However, you can use other material like poles/sticks, very small hurdles, cones, etc.
The most important skill is knowing how to train it.
Inter-Muscular Coordination training is performed with speed and explosive movements accompanied by determined coordination.
You have to train it in every direction possible.
🔁 Number of repetitions: 1 repetition for each direction, exercise, or orientation.
⏰Rest time: During this exercise, do not feel any fatigue.
🚀Speed of execution: Maximum speed while focusing on coordination and technique.
Below we provide a series of videos with different exercises that you can incorporate into your future routines.
When do you have to train it?
When performing these exercises explosively, you must train them 1 day prior to competition.
On Day -1 activation and speed exercises are performed to incorporate I.M.C.
Day -1 is used to lower the training load and to encourage you to get relaxed an active for the game.
What do you train it for?
Training this performance factor serves as:
Warming up/Pre-Activation:
As you have seen in the definition of point 1, Inter-muscular Coordination is the action and contraction of muscles in a coordinated and joint manner. Therefore, before you perform a sprint or high-intensity effort, you can use it as a pre-activation. Please note, that it will have to be as similar as possible to the subsequent effort.
For example:
If you are going to perform a “straight” sprint, the pre-activation will have to be “straight”.
For example:
If you are going to perform slaloms and changes of direction, the pre-activation will have to include changes of direction.
Specific work of the Inter-Muscular Coordination:
When you want to improve training for Inter-Muscular Coordination, you must give awareness to the different types of exercises. After each repetition per exercise, you need to rest and not accompany the exercise with another effort that can strain you and take away the importance of IMC.
