Effects of an external foci of attention at different distances on standing long jump in non-athletes.
Katsuhito Nagano, Mika Hata, Yumi Nagano
PMID 32884174WHAT IT FOUND
Placing a visual target line 20 cm beyond a non-athlete's usual jump distance significantly increased their jump length compared to no target.
Targets placed behind or exactly at the usual distance did not improve performance over the no-target control.
Key findings
01The group instructed to jump toward a line 20 cm beyond their reference jump showed a significantly higher increase in jump distance from the first to the second set compared to the group with no attention line.
02There was a strong positive correlation between the distance of the attention line and the actual jump distance achieved across the three groups that used a target.
03Participants in the +20 cm group reached only 96.1% of the target line on average, whereas those in the -20 cm group overshot their target by reaching 113.2% of the line distance.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The study included only 40 participants, with just 10 in each group, which limits the generalizability of the findings. All participants were young, healthy non-athletes (mean age 20.5 years); results may not apply to older adults, children, or individuals with physical disabilities. The intervention was acute (immediate performance effect) rather than a training program, so it is unclear if these attention focus instructions lead to long-term motor learning or sustained improvement. The authors note that the mechanism is speculative, suggesting it may involve coordinated muscle activity, but they did not measure muscle activity or biomechanics in this study.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that placing a target further away always improves performance indefinitely. The benefit was seen when the target was 20 cm beyond the reference jump, but the study did not test distances further out or in populations with different baseline abilities.