Background/Objectives: The number of people who practice gym activities is increasing. Most gym activities take place within a building, and the movements are controlled, making them closed-skill activities. This could decrease the processing speed capacity. The objective was to investigate whether a difference, assessed by a simple reaction time and muscle stiffness task, exists between people who practice gym versus open-skills sports activities. Methods: A total of 58 gym users and open-skills sport practitioners were recruited. Participants’ anthropometric characteristics were evaluated. Electrodes were set at the tibialis anterior (TA) and gastrocnemius lateralis (GL), and participants performed the simple reaction time task. A drop jump test (muscular stiffness) was also executed. A multiple comparison test was adopted to study the differences between groups for FAT%, reaction time, and ground contact time. The significance level was set at p ≤ 0.05. Results: Data from the groups presented no statistically significant differences in the simple reaction time task (p = 0.999) and in the drop jump (p = 0.999), or from a superficial electromyography point of view. Conclusions: This exploratory study detected no statistically significant differences between the groups. The study design does not support equivalence conclusions. Further studies are required to understand the topic in depth.
Petrigna et al. (2026) studied this question.