Responses to external attentional focus coaching strategies on standing long jump performance

BACKGROUND: External focus of attention (FOA) coaching instructions have been found to be effective in improving standing long jump (SLJ) performance using verbal instructions. However, no study has compared different strategies in delivering external FOA on SLJ performance acutely. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate responses to external FOA strategies on SLJ. METHODS: Eleven female field and court sport athletes (mean±SD, age: 21.91±1.98 years; mass=67.21±8.94 kg; height=167.52±5.54 cm) performed the SLJ test under six external coaching strategies (verbal, visual, read, verbal and visual combined and read, visual combined and control) to determine distance, take-off angle and knee valgus angle response. RESULTS: A repeated measures analysis of variance revealed a significant increase in SLJ distance for the verbal strategy (167.68±15.13 cm) compared to the control (160.45±15.13 cm) (P=0.009); the verbal/visual strategy (173.09±11.47 cm) compared to the read strategy (163.5±14.12 cm) (P=0.009) and for the verbal/visual strategy compared to the control (P=0.001). A strong inverse relationship existed between SLJ distance and take-off angle (r=-0.71, P=0.01). For knee valgus angle, a significant decrease was found for the read-visual (P=0.004) and visual (P=0.004) conditions compared to the control. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of our study suggest that different coaching strategies may be required dependent on whether performance or injury risk reduction is the goal.