Imaging melody and rhythm processing in young male artistic gymnasts.

This study will explain how the employment of the acoustic models created "ad hoc" on the athletes can help them to improve their performance on the pommel horse. According with the literature, the employment of an acoustic model in performance in which the timing as an important function helps the athletes to improve their performance. Pommel horse is the exercise between the six exercise of the gymnastic that more then other have a rhythmical component. To improve this component, we record the sound of a single elements of a typical exercise. The athletes perform these elements up they do in a good way. The audioo file is selected and cut to have a file that start with the sound from the first touch on the horse up the athletes go out from it. From the second practice the athletes listen the file with headphones five times immediately before the performance. The athletes have once for week an imagery session in which they imagine the single elements or the combination or the exercise after a relaxing phase. During the imagery session while they are imaging, they listen the file created using headphones. To evaluate the improvement in the rythm, we match the graphs of the exercise (time on the x's and sequence of the steps on the y's) with the clip audio given to the athletes and the with the graphs of the first performance.