A Holistic Focus of Attention Enhances Vertical Jump Performance Among Inexperienced Individuals

A holistic focus (HF) has been found to significantly improve performance over an internal focus (IF), in a similar way to an external focus (EF). There is a need to understand the effectiveness of a HF by investigating kinematic and kinetic outcome measures. 19 college-aged adults performed 12 vertical jumps under four conditions in a counterbalanced design. The conditions were, IF, EF, HF, and control, or no focus condition. All participants performed the vertical jumps on a force plate with 16 reflective markers placed on the lower extremities. Separate repeated measures ANOVAs with Sidak post-hoc were used to analyze jump height, flight height, peak force, takeoff velocity, and knee and hip flexion. A significant main effect for jump height was observed (p < 0.001). HF and EF jumped significantly higher than IF (p < 0.001; p < 0.001). EF also jumped significantly higher than control (p<.05). No significant main effects were observed for any kinematic or kinetic dependent variables. The results of this experiment support previous research by observing performance benefits of HF and EF over an IF. However, the benefits of HF and EF cannot be attributed to the kinetic or kinematic changes.