Enfoque de las instrucciones de atención en el béisbol durante el entrenamiento a los lanzadores.

It has often been shown that performance and learning of movement tasks can be improved, focusing on the effect of movement on the environment (external focus of attention) rather than the movement itself (internal focus of attention). However, most training instructions and feedback information given in sports seem to favor an internal focus on an external one. In the present study, we investigated the instructions and comments of the coaches in an instrumental sports action, namely baseball throwing, in which the external objectives are easily identifiable, such as the attack area or the receiver's glove. To this end, we record and analyze the release instructions and feedback statements of six baseball coaches delivered to 70 elite youth baseball pitchers (mean age 15.3 (SD 1.67) years) during regular training sessions Release during a four-week training period. All instructions and feedback statements were classified according to the type of attention of the invoked care (ie internal or external) and a rest category of all other statements. Of the statements that promote a specific attention approach (717/1699), only 31% (224/717) were classified as external attention statements. Consequently, the responses in a questionnaire completed by the launchers indicated that they used an internal focus of attention during practice and preferred to receive internal guidance on externally oriented instructions and comments. Current results show that, even in sports that involve clear external objectives, such as baseball throwing, the internal approach to care instructions prevails, despite experimental evidence in favor of the external focus of care instructions.