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Introduction: Recent research data show a significant decline in youth's muscle strength. Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to assess the efficacy of a suspension training intervention during physical education (PE) lessons on strength parameters in adolescents, compared with a control group. Methods: The sample of the study included 321 adolescents (158 boys and 163 girls, Mage = 16.54, SD = .91). The intervention group followed a suspension training program twice a week for a total of eight weeks during the PE lesson, while the control group attended the regular PE class throughout the intervention. A pre-intervention, a post-intervention and a detraining test were conducted. Field tests that measure muscle strength and endurance were used to assess lower body, core, upper body and handgrip strength (standing long jump, sit-up, push-up, handgrip). A two-way (2 groups X 3 measurements) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the efficacy of the intervention. Results: The results showed that students in the intervention group improved performance significantly from pre- to post-intervention in all tests compared to control participants. Regarding retention, the performance of the students in the intervention group, although decreased, remained significantly higher than that of the participants in the control group. Conclusions: These results suggest that suspension training is an effective and feasible resistance training method that can be integrated in PE lessons. Furthermore, due to the promptly observed improvements in strength, the suspension training program could lead to an increase in motivation to participate in the PE lesson and consequently, integrating strength training into the PE lesson throughout the school year could increase the academic learning time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, research concerning analogy, implicit and explicit instruction has focused on perceptual or motor skills with limited attention directed toward psychological skills such as self-efficacy or their interaction with motor skill performance. The present study investigated the effect of analogy, implicit and explicit methods on the acquisition and retention of a volleyball motor skill (reception), and self-efficacy for novices. Eighty female novices, aged from 10 to 11 years, were randomly selected and assigned to four equal groups (three experimental and one control). A pre-test, three different intervention programs of 12 training units (4 weeks X 3 times per week), according to the different learning methods, a post-test, and a retention test were conducted. Volleyball reception skill was measured via a field test (Wulf, McConnel, Gärtner & Schwarz, 2002), and self-efficacy was measured via a questionnaire (Theodorakis, 1996). A two-way (4 groups X 3 tests) mixed factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) and a post hoc Tukey test were used to analyze the data. The results showed that all three methods improved both motor skill and self-efficacy of novices over time. Comparing groups showed that the analogy learning group achieved the highest score in the retention test for both motor performance and selfefficacy. Moreover, the implicit group was better than the explicit and the control group. Analogy learning seems to be a promising instructional method for the improvement of both motor skills and self-efficacy. The participants in the analogy and implicit learning groups probably had limited access to declarative knowledge and, according to the "reinvestment hypothesis", they did not overload their working memory and did not block the automated process of performance. Additionally, when analogy learners received instructions to imitate a familiar form of movement pattern, this created a sense of success and pleasure which probably positively influenced their self-efficacy. Conversely, according to the "optimal theory", the improved self-efficacy of the analogy learners probably positively influenced the goal-setting procedure, which led to higher motivation and better performance. These results suggest that the analogy learning method has a positive effect on self-efficacy, which has been overlooked by previous studies in the motor learning literature, and is also positively correlated with motor skill perform [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]