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In this paper, Chair of Sport Psychology Member Wanja Wolff collaborated with Maik Bieleke (University of Konstanz, Department of Psychology) to investigate if tailored self-control strategies (action goals vs. action plans) would have an immediate effect on youth volleyball players’ subsequent service performance. This paper is one of the first studies to test the effect of these strategies in a naturalistic setting and using objective performance measures. The full abstract of the paper can be found below:

“Volleyball serves constitute an important example for a self-controlled sequence of actions in sports that is difficult to improve. It is therefore paramount to investigate whether and how conveying self-control strategies to athletes affects their service performance. To address this question, we conducted a pilot field study with sixty-two players from four Swiss volleyball schools. They performed a warm-up and subsequently a first series of 15 serves. Objective service performance was measured in terms of errors, velocity, and precision. Afterwards, players formulated either individual goals (goal condition) or plans (plan condition) based on their coaches' correction instructions. In a second series of 15 serves objective performance was worse in some respects compared to the first series (i.e., more errors in the plan condition, reduced precision in both conditions). Mixed-effects analyses of performance development across conditions in the second series showed initially reduced but steadily recouping precision and velocity, while the number of errors stayed constant. In contrast to the objective performance, coaches evaluated their players' service performance during the second series of serves as substantially better than during the first series. Taken together, the results of this pilot field study suggest that conveying either goals or plans as self-control strategies may involve initial adjustment costs followed by a subsequent recovery period.”

This research reflects our interest in the self-regulation of human performance and more specifically in regard to performance in sports. To learn more about this line of research, click here.

The bibliographic information of the paper: Bieleke, M., Kriech, C., & Wolff, W. (2019). Served Well? A Pilot Field Study on the Effects of Conveying Self-control Strategies on Volleyball Service Performance. Behavioral Sciences, 9(9). doi:10.3390/bs9090093