Abstract
Previous research in sport psychology and rehabilitation suggests that training with motor imagery (mental practice) is a potentially effective strategy to improve motor performance. The goal of the present study was to investigate the benefits of combining mental and physical training in learning a complex motor skill in basketball (the lay-up shot). To this end, sixty female university students were randomly assigned to either mental practice with physical training, or physical training alone. Motor performance was assessed before and after a four-week training period. To assess motor learning performance, a video analysis was carried out by three independent raters on the motor task before and after the training in both conditions. Results showed that mental practice condition improved coordination and movement accuracy, suggesting the potential effectiveness of this approach in training complex motor skills; furthermore, findings indicate the feasibility and accuracy of using video-based analysis of movement in the assessment of motor performance improvements.
Highlights
Motor imagery refers to the mental simulation of a movement without its physical execution
Consistent with the main hypothesis of this study, findings indicate that combined mental and physical practice can improve performance of a closed sport task. These findings are partially in line with those obtained by related studies investigating motor imagery in basketball (Post et al, 2010; Lamirand & Rainey, 1994; Savoy & Beitel, 1996)
Guillot et al (2009) trained three attack movements with 10 national female basketball players: results showed that motor imagery improved motor performance, mental practice was not found more effective than physical practice alone
Summary
Motor imagery refers to the mental simulation of a movement without its physical execution. The mental representation of the movement can be used during mental simulation to cue the learner on temporal and spatial elements of the skill By rehearsing this representation, the learner can use this information to monitor and improve the physical performance of the skill (Murphy & Jowdy, 1992). The learner can use this information to monitor and improve the physical performance of the skill (Murphy & Jowdy, 1992) Starting from this background, the main objective of this study was to investigate the efficacy of mental practice to improve learning of a complex motor skill in basketball. This approach is based on multiple raters’ evaluation of videorecorded movements along different dimensions
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