Attentional Focus and Practice Autonomy Enhance Penalty Kick Accuracy in Soccer

Abstract

This study investigated the immediate and cumulative effects of attentional focus (external vs. internal), practice autonomy, and their combination on soccer penalty kick performance. Methods: Ninety physically active male university students (average age 22.8 ± 1.5 years) were selected from a pool of 330 students who completed a 60 h university soccer course. Participants were randomly divided into six groups: external focus with target choice (EF-TC), external focus without target choice (EF-NTC), internal focus with target choice (IF-TC), internal focus without target choice (IF-NTC), autonomy support (AS), and a control group (C). Results: The EF-TC group demonstrated significantly higher accuracy than the IF-TC, IF-NTC, and C groups while performing comparably to the EF-NTC and AS groups in between-group analyses. Notably, the EF-NTC group showed the largest within-group improvement from pre-test to acquisition. Conclusions: The findings indicate that combining attentional focus with practice autonomy enhances the accuracy of penalty kicks, emphasizing the potential of tailored training methods for improving penalty kick performance in soccer.

These findings contribute to the growing literature on the mechanisms underlying effective motor learning and highlight the need for nuanced interpretation of both attentional and motivational factors. In particular, the results underscore the importance of attentional focus as a performance-enhancing strategy. Both internal and external focus conditions improved penalty kick accuracy in the short term, but only external focus demonstrated superior retention effects. Thus, adopting some form of attentional focus is advantageous, with external focus emerging as the more effective strategy for sustaining accuracy over time. However, given the variability in effects across tasks and populations, autonomy support may provide additional benefits under specific conditions and should be considered with regard to context, athlete characteristics, and training goals. From an applied perspective, coaches and practitioners may consider incorporating externally focused instructions during motor skill acquisition. While granting athletes autonomy may offer motivational benefits, its influence on learning appears to depend on factors such as task complexity and athlete experience. Future research should identify the most effective forms of external focus and autonomy support for complex motor tasks across different skill levels and sport-specific contexts. In addition, future research should examine younger populations, particularly adolescent athletes, to assess whether the benefits observed in university students generalize to earlier stages of skill acquisition.