the effects of external and internal attention focus in variable practice model of basketball free throwing learning

 The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of internal and external focus of attention with variable practice model in free throw basketball learning. This study a quasi-experimental. 32 female students of Shahid Beheshti University aged 18 to 24 were chosen. The task was basketball free throw. After teaching the basketball free throw, pre-test with 10 trials was taken and based on that result participants divide into four groups randomly. Eight participants were in each group. The groups include internal attention invariable practice model, external focus in practice variable model, variable practice and constant practice with no attentional strategy. the acquisition phase was 3 sessions per week, each session complete four blocks of 12 trials. In the retention phase and transfer phase the participants perform 10 trials. The result demonstrated that there was no difference between internal focus and external focus with invariable practice of basketball free throw in the acquisition phase. In retention phase, the significant difference between external focus– variable practice group and variable practice group without the instruction of attention was found and variable practice group without attention instruction was better than the others (P = 0.014). There was no significant difference between four training groups in transfer phase. We concluded that the learning of free basketball is more affected by the type of training than the focus of attention and in non-instructional attention conditions, participants learned the motor skills.