The Effects of a Strategic Instructional Self-Talk Intervention on Performance in a Complex Tennis Rally

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of a strategic self-talk intervention on a complex tennis performance test through the use of a narrow internal instructional self-talk plan. Fifty young beginner tennis players from two tennis academies were assigned into intervention and control groups. A pre/post quasi-experimental design was implemented, including baseline assessment, training intervention, and final assessment. The intervention lasted five weeks, during which all participants underwent the same training, with the experimental group using strategic self-talk. Repeated measures MANOVA revealed a significant time by group interaction for all tennis strokes; pairwise comparisons showed that the all strokes performance of the self-talk group improved from initial to final assessment and was better than the performance of the control group at final assessment. In addition, repeated measures ANOVA examining the overall performance of the rally showed that the intervention group achieved higher total rally scores than the control group. The effectiveness of the intervention in this multi-stroke task suggests that strategic self-talk facilitated movement sequences, possibly through an efficient shifting of attention. Accordingly, practitioners are encouraged to explore the potential of strategic self-talk for tasks requiring such attentional demands.