Optimizing Skill Acquisition and Performance

How your feedback may be keeping your athletes from performing their best

How can skill learning be facilitated, and how can performance be optimized? Two questions that every coach should consider. Fortunately, Dr. Gabriel Wulf, a distinguished professor at UNLV, has not only studied this but examined 15 years worth of research to provide answers to those 2 important questions.

The answer? An external focus.

Now I’ll be honest, it’s taken me a while to write about this topic, primarily because I was skeptical. I’ve experimented for a few months now both on myself and others and I’ve officially bought in. So if you too find yourself skeptical as you read it, I suggest you experiment.

In this week’s 3 Point’s, I’ll discuss Internal vs External Attentional Focus, why it matters, and how to facilitate learning and enhance performance with your teams.

1. Internal vs. External Focus

An internal focus is what we typically tend to use when executing a motor-skill (hitting a golf ball, shooting a basketball, kicking a soccer ball, etc.). It is when the performer focuses on the body movements of the task, and as Dr. Wulf describes, it is “what most instructors promote by giving instructions that refer to body movements.”

An external focus on the other hand is when the performer is focused on the intended movement affect on an implement (Ball, club, bat etc.).

An athlete with an internal focus would on focus on flicking their wrist to follow through, where an athlete with an external focus would focus on putting back spin on the ball (the intended affect on the ball).

2. It turns out that the little nuance makes a huge impact on not only performance but also skill learning.

Studies done on free throw shooting found that by focusing on ball trajectory or the rim, free throw accuracy improved, versus focusing on wrist-flexion or form. Further, studies done on putting and hitting golf shots yielded similar results; when performers were asked to focusing on the club face, the swing of the club or intended ball trajectory, their accuracy was enhanced compared to when they were instructed to focus on the movement of their arms or wrists.

Additional studies done on volleyball serves, soccer kicks and soccer throw-ins found that participants were more accurate when given externally focused feedback compared to internally focused.

In case you are skeptical about whether or not this works for your team, Wulf describes,

“Over the past 15 years, research on focus of attention has consistently demonstrated that an external focus enhances motor performance and learning relative to an internal focus. The breadth of this effect is reflected in its generalizability to different skills, levels of expertise, and populations, as well as its impact on both the effectiveness and efficiency of performance.”

3. Why an External Focus works

According to Wulf, “an internal focus induces a conscious type of control, causing individuals to constrain their motor system by interfering with automatic control processes” a process Wulf refers to as micro-choking. Whereas, “an external focus promotes the utilization of relatively automatic control processes – making performance more effective and efficient.”

Try it:

Give externally focused feedback next time your athletes are performing a motor-skill. I’d also encourage you to try it out yourself (this is a 2-for-1 newsletter if any coaches golf in the offseason). If you have questions for what this might look like for your sport, reach out!