# Attentional Focus and Practice Autonomy Enhance Penalty Kick Accuracy in Soccer

## TL;DR

This study shows that focusing externally and having practice autonomy improves soccer penalty kick accuracy.

## Contribution

The study introduces a novel combination of attentional focus and practice autonomy to enhance soccer performance.

## Key findings

- The EF-TC group had significantly higher accuracy than IF-TC, IF-NTC, and control groups.
- EF-NTC group showed the largest improvement from pre-test to acquisition.
- Combining attentional focus with autonomy enhances penalty kick performance.

## Abstract

This study investigated the immediate and cumulative effects of attentional focus (external vs. internal), practice autonomy, and their combination on soccer penalty kick performance. Methods: Ninety physically active male university students (average age 22.8 ± 1.5 years) were selected from a pool of 330 students who completed a 60 h university soccer course. Participants were randomly divided into six groups: external focus with target choice (EF-TC), external focus without target choice (EF-NTC), internal focus with target choice (IF-TC), internal focus without target choice (IF-NTC), autonomy support (AS), and a control group (C). Results: The EF-TC group demonstrated significantly higher accuracy than the IF-TC, IF-NTC, and C groups while performing comparably to the EF-NTC and AS groups in between-group analyses. Notably, the EF-NTC group showed the largest within-group improvement from pre-test to acquisition. Conclusions: The findings indicate that combining attentional focus with practice autonomy enhances the accuracy of penalty kicks, emphasizing the potential of tailored training methods for improving penalty kick performance in soccer.