Effect of Imagery Training on College Students’ Basketball Shooting Accuracy

Abstract

Background and Aim: The difficulty in basketball shooting predominantly arises from a lack of adequate physical abilities, incomplete skill development, and a shortage of appropriate training. The objective of this research was to integrate meditation training and imagery training into the shooting training of the college men's basketball team at Xi'an Aviation College. Materials and Methods: In this research, the questionnaire survey method and experimental method were used. Three experts were invited to rate the shooting performance of 40 of China’s college basketball players, divided into 20 each in the experimental and control groups. In the experiment, the students' imaginative ability, self-confidence in shooting status, and scores of shooting performance were tested in the 1st, 4th, and 8th weeks, respectively, and then the results were compared and analyzed by T-test. Results: After 8 weeks of training, the technical movements and shooting hit rate of the experimental group were significantly higher than that of the control group; the performance of the experimental group and the control group both improved after the experiment, but the experimental group had a significant increase in shooting performance, imagination ability, and shooting status self-confidence, while the control group only had a significant increase in the total score of shooting performance. Conclusion: College students' shooting scores are affected by a variety of factors, and each student's learning needs and strengths are different, so the teaching program needs to be flexibly adapted to suit the needs of different students. These results showed that the integration of meditation training and imagery training can significantly improve college students' shooting performance more than traditional shooting training, as well as improve students' imagery ability and shooting self-confidence, which in turn improves the quality of shooting training.