Attentional Control In Sports

Have you ever had a difficult time focusing? Athletes, in particular, have to retain large amounts of information. In order to act on the right information, you need a filter to help you focus your attention. Today we're going to talk about attentional control through the example of a basketball player.

Relevant cues that help a shooter sink a shot include BEEF:

• balance
• elbows
• extension
• follow through 

This is also an easy way to remember shooting form, and a great tool for beginners and advanced players.

How does BEEF help you focus better on the external environment?

A shooter needs to find the perfect balance in order to make a shot. Shooting off balance will lead to a miss nearly every time in beginners. Even professionals need to learn how to master proper balance before learning advanced shots such as fadeaways and hook shots.

Balance means setting your feet to shoulder width, pointing your shooting foot towards the hoop, and keeping your core stable as you get into a shooting stance. Without the stable core, it’s easy to lose balance in the rest of your body.

The shooting elbow needs to line up with the rim at close to a 90-degree elbow, while the non-shooting hand needs to be level to the side of the ball. Basically, you create a right angle with both arms.

Next, after you achieve good shooting balance and the elbow is set you need to work on your extension. The shooting hand should extend towards the front of the rim giving the ball plenty of arcs while the non-shooting hand remains in almost the exact position it began. The shooting elbow extends and the thumb and index finger curls at the top of the extension to release the ball in a curved arc to the hoop.

Then you follow through, holding your shooting hand towards the hoop after you release the ball.

The power of cues & memory

This weeks model shows that sensory input can come from so many different angles. Bad cues to filter out include staring at your feet before you shoot, lining your body straight to the hoop, and cocking the ball far to one side before you release. Shooting performance takes time. Short term memory comes as you think about each of the steps involved in a shot, but that short term memory needs to transfer into long term memory so that the form becomes automatic in a game situation. When you think too much about your form for every shot there is a delay in what you know and what you actually do. That’s where practice and thousands of repetitions come into play.

Rather than focusing on the mechanics as you shoot (internal focus), evidence shows that shooters perform better when they lock into their environment (Wulf, 2007). By focusing on the rim instead of the proper mechanics during a free throw, shooters made more free throws than those who worried about the position of their hands and wrist.

The key focus of making a shot then should not be your own movement but your movement in relation to the environment. That’s when shooters get locked in and start to feel their way to a successful shot.

Sources
Atkinson, R. C., Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). "Chapter: Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes". In Spence, K.W.; Spence, J.T. The psychology of learning and motivation (Volume 2). New York: Academic Press. pp. 89–195.

Wulf, G. (2007). Attentional focus and motor learning: A review of 10 years of research. Gabriele Wulf on attentional focus and motor learning [Target article]. E-Journal Bewegung und Training, 1, 4-14.

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