Research in Sports Management and Movement Behavior

Effects Of Different Focus Of Attention Conditions On Skilled Futsal Players’ Agility Performance

Authors

Farhad Ghadiri 1
Moslem Bahmani 2
Abbas Bahram 3

1 Associate Professor Of Faculty of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, Kharazmi University.

2 Assistant Professor Of Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Sports Science Department, Shiraz University.

3 Professor Of Faculty of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, Kharazmi University.

Abstract
Aim: One of the recent research challenges in the field of attentional focus instructions, are the study of its effects on the performance of elite athletes in continuous tasks. The aim of this study was to compare the effects of different attentional focus instructions on performance of agility in elite futsal players.

Methods Participants included 12 elite futsal players (mean age 23.91±1.56) that were selected from the first league of Division Qom via convenience sampling method. Participants were asked to perform the agility L run test under three attentional focus instructions (the internal, external and control) in three trials. Rrepeated measure Analysis of Variance and paired t test were used for analysis of data.

Result: The results showed a significant effects of the type of attentional focus instructions on test execution time. Analyses showed that performance in the external focus of attention was higher than the internal focus conditions. Also, the result demonstrated that there is no significant difference between internal focus of attention and control conditions, and also between external focus of attention and control condition.

Conclusion: The results of this study provide evidence that in skilled athletes, executing the continuous tasks improve through verbal instructions that conduct focus of attention externally.

Keywords

Agility
Skilled Futsal Players
Focus of attention
performance
Verbal instruction
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