Kinematic Effects of Varying Adolescents' Attentional Instructions for Standing Long Jump

Studies examining attentional focus in the motor performance of children and young adolescents have produced mixed results. We studied 26 seventh-grade physical education student volunteers ( M_age = 12.7 years; SD = 0.56) who performed two standing long jumps for maximum displacement in four counterbalanced instructional conditions: (a) no cues provided, (b) focus on rapid knee extension, (c) focus on rapid forward arm swing, and (d) focus to jump as close as possible to a cone placed at 3 meters. The last condition, encouraging an external focus, led to significantly greater jumping distances and significantly lower projection angles (36.9°) when compared with internal attentional foci on the actions of the legs (40.2°) and arms (38.6°). Compared with the leg focus, the arm focus lead to significantly greater jumping distances but no differences for projection angle. While these results are consistent with those of past adult participants, when comparing external and internal attentional foci, this study extended these findings to adolescents and revealed differences in projection angle, indicating that cueing young adolescents to focus on arm action did not appear to constrain movement in the same manner as it has in adults.