ABSTRACT

Basketball is one of the most popular sports in the world, played both at professional and amateur levels. Being an open-skill interval-activity sport, basketball strongly depends on the players’ capability to move quickly, jump, hold the ball and coordinate lower and upper limb movements. Basketball players need high levels of speed, agility, muscular strength, and anaerobic power (Hoffman et al., 1999; Kalinski et al., 2002), and a moderate aerobic endurance to maintain the level of the numerous all-out performances throughout the match (Apostolidis et al., 2004; Laplaud et al., 2004). In the literature (Hoffman et al., 1999; Apostodolis et al., 2004; Cook et al., 2004; Balciunas et al., 2006; Ostojic et al., 2006; Tessitore et al., 2006; Visnapuu and Jurimae 2007), anaerobic profiles of basketball players has been assessed by means of sprints over 10 to 30m distances, vertical jumps, and handgrip strength, while technical skills were evaluated by requiring players to cover a given distance as fast as possible whilst bouncing the ball (Apostodolis et al., 2004; Tessitore et al., 2006). Recently, the measurement of in-phase and anti-phase rhythmical synchrony of hand and foot flexion-extensions has been proposed to evaluate the inter-limb coordination of team sport players (Lupo et al., 2006). The movement constraints of in-phase and anti-phase coordination patterns, represent a phenomenological framework to explain how the central nervous system manages the control of complex tasks and strategies (Turvey, 1990; Kelso, 1994; Meesen et al., 2006) and to evaluate the attentional control of the individual in maintaining the less stable anti-phase movement patterns (Baldissera et al., 2000).