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Summary
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None.
Readily available.
Adult supervision is recommended while playing a high-impact sport.
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If you want a Project Idea with full instructions, please pick one without an asterisk (*) at the end of the title.
Abstract
Did you know that athletes use visualization of sports tasks to score the winning shot in sporting games? Check out how much visualization impacts your precision in sports with this science project idea.
Introduction
Professional athletes train multiple hours a day for several months to perform at their best during their dedicated sports season. They train both their body and their mind to maximize their performance. Many of us know how to train our bodies, but how do we train our minds for sports? If you've ever played or watched a sports game, coaches may have encouraged athletes to "get their head in the game.” What does this mean for the connection between our mind and body, did they train to keep their head in the game, and how can we better train to maximize our performance in sports?
Our nervous system is essential for every part of our daily life. Our brain tells our body what to do, and we even get feedback from our body on what's going on in our environment from our body's sensory input. One neural circuit, or connection of neurons, that tells your body when and how to move is the motor circuit. This neural circuit is responsible for what is called our gross motor skills, which move the largest muscles of our body. Therefore, the output of this neural circuit allows us to make major body movements, which are required to play sports. One example of this circuit at work is our brain telling our body to move the quadriceps of our legs to be able to run or swim or to move our core muscles in our abdomen to balance on a bike or a beam.
Now that you know how the motor circuit works, how can we improve its performance? Many athletes use visualization to improve their overall success in their sports. Visualization is imagining what you plan to do before you perform the action or task. It prepares your nervous system to anticipate how to act. How can you test the impact visualization has on the accuracy of your gross motor skills? Some professional athletes perform visualization training daily for an hour leading up to an important competition and engage as many of their five senses (touch, hearing, sight, smell, taste) as possible. How does visualization impact gross motor function? Does engagement of more or less of your senses during visualization further impact your gross motor skill performance? Test it yourself by designing your own experiment.
- Examples of gross motor skills:
- Balancing (sitting or standing with eyes closed), walking, running, twisting, shooting a basketball into a hoop, climbing, jumping rope, biking
- Precision measurement ideas:
- Accuracy of performing tasks along a path, measurement of the distance from a specific target, total number of completed tasks compared to attempted
Working with Human Test Subjects
There are special considerations when designing an experiment involving human subjects. Fairs affiliated with Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) often require an Informed Consent Form (permission sheet) for every participant who is questioned. Consult the rules and regulations of the science fair that you are entering, prior to performing experiments or surveys. Please refer to the Science Buddies documents Projects Involving Human Subjects and Scientific Review Committee for additional important requirements. If you are working with minors, you must get advance permission from the children's parents or guardians (and teachers if you are performing the test while they are in school) to make sure that it is all right for the children to participate in the science fair project. Here are suggested guidelines for obtaining permission for working with minors:
- Write a clear description of your science fair project, what you are studying, and what you hope to learn. Include how the child will be tested. Include a paragraph where you get a parent's or guardian's and/or teacher's signature.
- Print out as many copies as you need for each child you will be surveying.
- Pass out the permission sheet to the children or to the teachers of the children to give to the parents. You must have permission for all the children in order to be able to use them as test subjects.
Bibliography
For more information on visualization:
- Stephen, F. et al. (2022, August 11). A Voyage into the Visualization of Athletic Performances: A Review. Retrieved January 20, 2025.
- Huberman, Andrew. (2023, April 24). Science-Based Mental Training & Visualization for Improved Learning | Huberman Lab Podcast. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
For in-depth information on the primary motor cortex:
- University of Wisconsin-Madison. (n.d.) Primary motor cortex. Retrieved January 22, 2025.
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