Investigating Running economy in beginners: The role of associative and dissociative attentional focus with internal and external dimensions

Type of attentional focus on physiological and psychological state of people can be effective running time. Although the role of external attention approaches in forming optimal movement has been approved for several times, the role of associative and dissociative factors with movement has not been known in the case of manipulating the different tasks and individual constraints. Therefore, the presents study examined the role of associative and dissociative attentional focus with internal and external dimensions on running economy of beginners.Twelve beginner women (aged 18 to 30 years old) ran on the treadmill. To measure Vmax of participants, the starting speed was set at 6 km/h and increased to 2 km/h per minute. The process was continued until voluntary fatigue. The speed used in each of the five test conditions (internal associative, external associative, internal dissociative, external dissociative, control) was 70% of the maximum speed of each individual. The results of repeated- measure ANOVA revealed that associative attentional focus with internal/external dimension resulted in higher oxygen consumption and blood lactate, which caused lower running economy in beginners. The results of internal/external dissociative attention indicated lower consumption of oxygen and less amount of blood lactate (higher economy). Based on the results of the present study, dissociative attention is the most economical method for running in beginners.