Enhancing long jump performance through attentional focus

Thesis (M.S., Kinesiology) -- California State University, Sacramento, 2013.Most track and field events have not received much attention by researchers investigating attentional focus. The long jump, being one of the track events that has been neglected in previous studies is in need of research to find which attentional focus produces the greatest performances (Partridge, Porter, & Wu 2012). Studies on attentional focus have mostly been done on skills that manipulate an object in some manner (Nolan, Porter, Ostrowski, & Wu, 2010). Conducting research on the long jump, a skill that requires no object manipulation, and is a whole body movement, will add new empirical evidence to the field of attentional focus. The findings could potentially be of great use to practitioners and coaches for instructing the long jump and possibly other track events as well (Nolan, Porter, Ostrowski, & Wu, 2010). \ud Sources of Data\ud An external focus of attention has been shown to produce greater results than an internal focus of attention. The Constrained Action Hypothesis explains that when a performer adopts an external focus of attention, a more automatic control process is used that leads to faster and more reflexive movements. Adopting an internal focus of attention will cause the natural automatic control processes to be interrupted by consciously attempting to control ones own movements causing decreases in the performance of movement (Shea & Wulf, 2001). \ud Adopting an external focus of attention has been seen to induce various performance enhancements in a multitude of tasks when compared to an internal focus of attention. These include increased agility, jump height and distance, force production, muscular efficiency, and others. (Nolan, Ostrowski, porter, & Wulf, 2010; Dufek & Wulf, 2009; Dufek, Lozano, Pettigrew, & Wulf, 2010; Anton, Porter, & Wu, 2011). Research needed to investigate whether these performance enhancements will be seen in the long jump has not been reported. Adding attentional focus research findings to the coaching literature for track and field is needed (Partridge, Porter, Wu, 2010).\ud Conclusions Reached\ud Analysis revealed that there were no significant differences between participants??? performance when employing natural, internal, or external focus conditions. The null-hypotheses were accepted as showing no difference between day 1 and day 2 performances, as well as no differences between the external and internal focus of attention condition performances.Kinesiolog