Immediate Effect of Mental Imagery Training on Accuracy of Basketball Free Throws in Bangladesh

Abstract

Mental imagery (MI) training is a useful experience to improve basketball free-throw (FT) shooting accuracy. The purpose of this study was to examine the immediate effect of mental imagery training on the improvement of free-throw shooting accuracy in basketball. Twenty (20) male basketball players were randomly selected as subjects. All subjects were randomly assigned into two groups: the experimental group (n=10) and the control group (n=10). A pre-test and post-test were given to every subject and each subject performed ten (10) free throws. For statistical analyses, the average values of these ten (10) free throws were used. There was a single conduct session (MI) with the experimental group lasting about ten minutes. Descriptive statistics, inferential statisticsdependent t-test, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were applied in the study, and the level of significance was p<0.05 and p<0.01. Paired sample t-test of the experimental group ware statistically significant (p<0.01) and the control group was also statistically significant (p<0.05) difference between pre-test and post-test values. However, the mean values of the post-test showed that the experimental group (mean number of successful free throws = 7.30) had a higher average number of free-throw shooting accuracy than the control group (mean number of successful free throws = 6.50). In conclusion, this study indicates that basketball players may benefit from mental imagery training to improve their free throw shooting accuracy.