Talking to Yourself



My students’ papers are graded so I’ve had the time to review more research and digest it for you. Today’s topic: Self-instructions.

While most of you have undoubtedly heard of self-talk or affirmation, self-instruction is different. Instead of “pumping you up” like self-talk (e.g., “I am a swift and efficient runner”, “I always win match-point with ease,” “I am an awesome athlete”) self-instructions focus on skill-set.

Self-instructions involve thinking of what to do next or how to do it correctly. In their article on the effects of self-instruction on sport performance, John Malouff and Colleen Murphy give the following examples:

…a baseball pitcher might think “bend” just before throwing a pitch; a tennis player might think “high toss” just before serving.

Past research has often combined self-talk and self instruction and has found that it led to better performance than athletes’ usual thought. Malouff and Murphy decided to test whether or not self-instructions alone were effective. They set up a mock golf putting tournament and randomly split 100 adults into an intervention group, who were asked to give themselves a self-instruction like “body still” or a group that was told to putt as usual.

The results were interesting. The self-instruction golfers needed fewer putts and reported that they thought they were putting better than normal than the “putt-as-usual” group.

The authors conclude that the findings support prior research that self-instructions that suggest focusing on a target improved the performance of task that require precise motor movements or accuracy (e.g., putting, aiming a ball at a target, serving).

Since their research focused entirely on fine-motor skills and is most applicable to athletes that play sports like golf, soccer, baseball, tennis, etc. Malouff and Murphy caution against generalizing these results to other sports – like endurance or strength sports. And while no research has been conducted on the topic, there is certainly anecdotal evidence to suggest that self-instructions may be useful to those of you who run, cycle and/or swim.

In his book Chi Running Danny Dreyer uses the word “lean” to encourage runners to maintain proper posture. Dr. Nicholas Romanov, in his book on the Pose Method of running, recommends “pose-fall-pull.” Chris Carmichael, in his book The Ultimate Ride instructs cyclist to “pull-through” the bottom of the pedal stroke. All of these are forms of instruction that can easily be used as self-instruction by endurance athletes who want to put Malouff and Murphy’s research to the test.

So here’s my challenge, give self-instruction a try (if you’re unsure how to come up with a short self-instruction phrase for yourself, email me at craig@sportsminded.us and I’ll be more than glad to help you). Then write a comment to this post so that we can do an informal study of its effectiveness. Also be sure to check out the November Sportsminded Survey which asks about self-instruction.

I can’t wait to hear how your experiments go!


Reference: Malouff, J. and Murphy, C. (2001). Effects of Self-Instruction on Sport Performance. Journal of Sport Behavior, 29, 159-168.



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