Self-as-a-model training of left foot Australian Football punt kicking in two cases using reversed video footage of the player's right foot kicks

Abstract

Introduction: In Australian Football, bilateral punt kicking skill is desirable, but players’ preferred side kick is often better. To investigate the effectiveness of video self-as-a-model for improving performance, two Australian Football players viewed video-clips of kicks by their non-preferred foot (left) in order to improve the performance ratio of non-preferred to preferred. To display an apparent left foot kick, video-clips of the athletes performing a right footed kick were reversed. Players were asked to observe the video-clip sequence three times a day during the 2-week training period. Methodology: The video footage was obtained from two Australian Football players performing 10 kicks each with the right and left foot, while aiming at a target placed 50 metres away. Adobe Premier Pro was used to produce a DVD for each player. The DVD displayed footage of their three best right foot kicks which was reversed, thus displaying apparent left kicks. The player watched their DVD three times a day for two weeks, after which a post-test was conducted, with a retention test at six weeks. Results: Both players showed a significant right foot advantage for kick distance after the pre-test, an advantage of 13 metres for player 1 (p< 0.01) and three metres (p= 0.02) for player 2. Thereafter, left foot distance was analysed as a proportion of the distance kicked on the right foot. Bilaterality of performance over the three sessions showed significant improvement. The L/R ratios were 0.73, 0.79, and 0.83 for player 1 (linear trend over sessions p= 0.01), and were 0.93, 0.96 and 0.99 for player 2 (p= 0.04). In terms of accuracy, although the deviation of the kicks from the goal centre lessened over sessions, improvements of 0.8 and 0.2 metres were not significant (p= 0.24 and 0.76, respectively). Player questioning afterwards indicated that both thought they had been observing good examples of their left foot kicks. Conclusion: The training time needed to influence bilateral skill differences is so great that few players or coaches attempt to do so, despite its advantage. As such, non-preferred side skills are typically worse. This study used a video editing application to present players with an improved version of their apparent left side skill performance. Repeated observation of this performance was associated with a significant improvement in the L:R ratio for kick distances in the post-observation period in both cases. Thus further research into innovative and efficient methods of training non-preferred-side skills, such as reversed self-as-a-model footage, are needed.