The effect of motivational and instructional self-talk on precision and endurance performance tasks

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between motivational and instructional self-talk on precision and endurance performance in male and female NCAA Division III collegiate soccer players. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups, motivational self-talk (MST), instructional self-talk (IST), and control. Each participant took part in a precision shooting task and a biking endurance task before and after attending two short interventions teaching them about either MST, IST, or an unrelated lesson on the history of soccer. The hypotheses were that (1) Self-talk would have an effect on precision whereby participants using self-talk would show a greater increase in number of targets hit than participants in the control group; (2) IST would have an effect on precision whereby participants using IST would show a greater increase in number of targets hit than participants using MST; (3) Self-talk would have an effect on endurance whereby participants using self-talk would show a greater increase in time to exhaustion than participants in the control group; and (4) MST would have an effect on endurance whereby participants using MST would show a greater increase in time to exhaustion than participants using IST. Hypothesis 3 was supported, suggesting that self-talk may have the potential to make a tangible difference in athletic endurance performance and that different types of tasks may benefit from specific types of self-talk.