Using an Imagery Intervention to Train Visual Exploratory Activity in Elite Academy Football Players

Abstract

Football players adapt their movements to opportunities within the surrounding environment by engaging in Visual Exploratory Activity (VEA) to pickup information. This study adds to the extant literature by using a six-week PETTLEP imagery intervention to train VEA and improve performance with the ball. A single-case, multiple-baseline across participants' design was conducted with five elite academy football players. Results indicated that a PETTLEP imagery intervention improved VEA, particularly in center midfielders. Additionally, indications of improvements in performance with the ball were present within some participants. Future researchers could examine the processes underpinning VEA to enhance applied interventions for this skill.

Scanning, Contextual Factors, and Association With Performance in English Premier League Footballers: An Investigation Across a Season

“…The results provide some support that scanning is a process that practitioners could focus on to help football players improving their pickup of visual information, to facilitate performance. Previous studies have shown that even relatively short interventions have the capacity to help football players at the professional ( Jordet, 2005b ) and elite youth academy levels ( Pocock et al, 2017 ) increase their rate of visual scanning and that this again might positively support performance (i.e., improvements in performance were noted for some of the players in both those studies). Indeed, coaches have started to integrate exercises on scanning into their practices (e.g., Jozak and Kepcija, 2017 ; Pulling et al, 2018 ) and emerging technological innovations are addressing this skill (e.g., the Footbonaut, Beavan et al, 2018 ).…”

Read-the-game: System for skill-based visual exploratory activity assessment with a full body virtual reality soccer simulation

“…To confirm the system effectiveness as a training tool, it is also important to perform skill transfer tests to determine whether repetitive usage of the VR simulator leads to substantial improvements in the on-field performance. A good option is a variant of the methodology used by Pocock et al (2017) to confirm the effectiveness of the PETTLEP imagery intervention in the improvement of VEA [21] while considering the specifics of the proposed system.…”

“…Since we strive to define read-the-game elements as a subset of skills that can be measured and analyzed, we focus on identifying a quantifiable perceptual component of such a skill. Related research reported that "football [soccer] players adapt their movements to opportunities within the surrounding environment by engaging in VEA to pick-up information" [21]. Initially, this concept was defined by Jordet (2005) as "a body and/or head movement in which the player's face is actively and temporarily directed away from the ball, seemingly with the intention of looking for teammates, opponents or other environmental objects or events relevant to the carrying out of a subsequent action with the ball" [10].…”

Goalkeeping in the soccer penalty kick

“…Not surprisingly, we see good prospects, if only because the recommendations will be grounded in a goalkeeper's action capabilities. This perspective will support individually tailored interventions, which are particularly commonplace with elitelevel populations (see Pocock, Dicks, Thelwell, Chapman, & Barker, 2017). We encourage researchers and students to join our efforts to test and develop this affordance-based control model for penalty goalkeeping, and more general, toward similar models for interceptive actions in other sports.…”