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BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Chronic ankle instability is a common injury in athletes that leads to postural control disorders. The aim of this study was to compare the effect of external focus of attention and postural task alone on center of pressure sway in athletes with chronic ankle instability and healthy athletes during dual task training. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was performed on 29 male volleyball athletes with a referral from a specialist and 29 healthy athletes matched with the affected group in terms of age, height and weight. Subjects in the two groups were on the balance board with single-leg and double-leg stance, standing in the center of the force plate for 60 seconds and performing postural tasks alone and with external focus. The degree of displacement of the pressure center was measured to investigate the variables of standard deviation of amplitude and mean velocity. FINDINGS: In double-leg stance, standard deviation of amplitude in medio-lateral (14.2±2.1) and anterior-posterior (16.7±3.3), mean velocity in medio-lateral (39.2±9.8) and anterior-posterior (40.7±6.1) directions in patients during external focus were significantly less than the standard deviation of amplitude in medio-lateral (12.2±1.5) and anterior-posterior (13.9±2.4), mean velocity in medio-lateral (46.2±13.1) and anterior-posterior (48.4±9.6) directions during the single task. In single-leg stance, standard deviation of amplitude in medio-lateral (16.1±2.1) and anterior-posterior (13.1±1.7), mean velocity in medio-lateral (42.2±13.3) and anterior-posterior (40.7±8.6) directions in patients during external focus were significantly less than the standard deviation of amplitude in medio-lateral (11.1±2.1) and anterior-posterior (17.4±3.3), mean velocity in medio-lateral (47.8±16.6) and anterior-posterior (55.2±17.4) directions during the single task. CONCLUSION: The results of the study showed that external focus task leads to distraction from postural control and reduces postural sway in athletes with chronic ankle instability.

focus of attention is widely used as a training method. This method helps to improve skill performance. The optimal focus of attention has always been a basic question for many researchers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of different focus of attention instructions on muscular endurance of expert kung Fu athletes. In a semi-experimental design with repeated measurements 16 expert athlete of kung Fu were selected via available and purposeful sampling. They tried to perform the wall sit test under 4 different conditions internal focus (Attention to keeping the knee at 90 angle), the external near (focus on standing like a chair), external far (Attention to a computer screen displaying a chair) and control (without attention instructions). Within-group variance analysis results with repeated measurements showed that the control condition was meaningfully better than three other conditions (p

Aim: One of the issues that have been considered more than before is the issue of aging. An aging is a period that is accompanied by gradual, progressive and spontaneous erosion changes in most physiological devices and functions of the body. One of the widespread problems that occur in the aging process is the loss of balance, increased fluctuations and the risk of falling. Falling down is one of the most common and most serious problems are aging. For this reason, today, many researchers have drawn attention to the various ways in which elderly people develop their balance. Recently, some researchers have found that the use of cognitive strategies such as self-talk can improve the performance of motor tasks. Self-talk, essentially has two main instructional and motivational functions. Motivational self-talk through increased self-confidence and instructional self-talk by enhancing focus on techniques improve their sports performance and learning skills. On the one hand, it is important to increase the effectiveness of the instructions in order to focus on the focus. Wolfe's researches (1998-1992), given the constrained action hypothesis in most sports skills as well as balance skills, suggest that the use of external attention in comparison with internal attention during the skill leads to better performance and learning. Several studies have been conducted on motivational and instructional self-talk about different athletic skills and different skill levels that have led to a variety of outcomes, but few studies have considered the scope of balance. So, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of attentional focus types as the self-talk form on static and dynamic balance in elderly women using instructional self-talk focus strategy. Methodology: The present study was a quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test. The experimental group included instructional self-talk with internal focus and instructional self-talk with external attention as well as a control group. The population of the study consisted of all elderly women living in the nursing home in Qazvin who 45 people (66.75 ± 5.65 years) were selected according to the inclusion criteria. Inclusion criteria included Lack of movement restrictions, non-fracture in the lower extremities in the past year and the lack of use of neurological drugs. After the pre-test they were randomly assigned to groups. The control group without self-talk, self-talk group with internal focus and self-talk group with external focus practice their balance skills during the five sessions. At the end of the fifth session, the post- test was conducted using static balance (stork) and dynamic balance (timed up and go) tests. In the stork test, the subject must stand on top of his leg, lift the other leg and stick to the knee of the leg, and simultaneously place his hands on the iliac crest of the pelvis. The time that a person could stand open with his eyes was considered as an indicator of his static balance ability. Each subject performed the test three times and the highest time was recorded. The errors that caused the test to be stopped include lifting the hands from iliac crest of the pelvis, detaching the leg from the knee of the foot and any movement on the foot of the reliance.Each subject performed a three-time test of timed up and go, and his best time was recorded. Since the subject was announcing his stand, the timer began to work, and the timer stopped when it hit the subject back with chair. The self-talk group with the instruction of focus of the internal attention, repeated the words "knee and foot" before each loud performance, which meant "bending slightly knees and maintaining the balance on the foot", and the external attention group referred to the term "target and wall" Which meant "looking at the target mounted on the wall.Results: One-way ANOVA, mixed ANOVA and repeated measure ANOVA were used to analyze the data. Data was analyzed using SPSS software version 20. The significance level was considered 0.05. The results showed that both self-talk groups performed significantly better than the control group in static balance.Conclusion: However Self-talk interferences with both types of attentional focus; it was not a significant difference in the dynamic balance of elderly people (P≥0.05). Taking the results into consideration it can be concluded that, self-talk with internal and external focus instructions can be considered as a cognitive strategy to improve the static balance of elderly people.

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of the external focus of attention on the rotator cuff muscle activity for the timely hit forehand drive by table tennis players. Methods: Twelve professional table tennis players with mean age of 26.5 years voluntarily participated in this study. The electrical activities of the muscles of the shoulder girdle using M.A 300 machine and bipolar electrodes surface under two conditions .First with external focus of attention and then without such attention were recorded, first without any guidance blows forehand drive was carried out by subjects (without focus). Then such subject was asked to focus their attention on the area marked for the ball landing (external focus of attention). Muscle activities in both preparation and tapping phases were analyzed the three –dimensional (200 Hz, Vicon, with four camera series T) motion analysis system was used to obtain the data. Data was analyzed by running reported measures ANOVA at a significance level of p0.05) but the different between the intensity of muscle activity was meaningful. This suggests that there is a mutual influence between the two attention factors and muscles (p=0.03), that is, orientation can have a significant effect on the severity of muscle contraction. Intensities of muscle contraction in the preparation and tapping were different (p