The Immediate Effect of Holistic and External Focus of Attention on the Improvement of Single-Leg Hop and Knee Range of Motion of Female Athletes Prone to Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury

Document Type : Original article

Authors

1 Department of Sports Sciences, Kish International Campus, University of Tehran, kish, Iran

2 Department of Sports injury and biomechanics, Faculty of Sport Sciences and health, University of Tehran , Tehran, Iran

3 Department of Motor Behavior, Faculty of Sport Sciences, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Background and Aims: One of the most common and dangerous injuries in sports is an Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injury. Today, despite the ACL injury prevention programs, the prevalence of this injury remains high. So far, research has supported the positive effect of an external focus of attention, but no information was found on the use of a holistic focus of attention as a process that would invoke automatic control in ACL injury prevention The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of holistic and external focus of attention on single-leg hop length and knee range of motion of female athletes with anterior cruciate ligament injury.
Materials and Methods: The research method was semi-experimental and the study design was Within-group or Repeated measures. Thirteen female athletes prone to anterior cruciate ligament injury (screened by Tuck test) with an average age of 23.77±4.42 years were selected purposefully. Participants performed three jumps under each focus of attention conditions (control, external and holistic) and nine jumps in total. The effect of order of conditions was controlled by a counterbalancing. Thus, after 3 jumps in the control condition, group 1 first performed 3 jumps in the holistic condition and then 3 jumps in the external condition, and group 2 did the opposite. The single-leg hop test was used to measure the performance of the participants.
Results: According to the results of the analysis of variance with repeated measures, the effect of the focus of attention on the jump distance was significant (p=0.001). Post hoc pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni correction showed that the jump distance in the external focus condition was significantly higher than the control condition (p=0.002). But there was not a significant difference between the external and holistic focus of attention conditions; Also, the conditions of holistic focus and control (p<0.05). But in the range of motion of the knee, it showed that it was significantly higher in the holistic focus of attention than in the self-control attention and there was no significant difference between the general and external focus of attention (p=0.965).
Conclusion: Based on the results, it seems that the use of instructions with an external focus and holistic focus can increase knee range of motion and with an external focus can increase the single-leg hop performance in female athletes prone to knee injuries and can be used to improve performance.

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The Scientific Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine
Volume 13, Issue 4
In Press
September and October 2024

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History

  • Receive Date: 15 September 2024
  • Revise Date: 01 October 2024
  • Accept Date: 13 October 2024
  • First Publish Date: 13 October 2024

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