Effects of sport imagery training and imagery ability on badminton service return in a secondary-school physical education setting.

The effects of sport imagery training and imagery ability on badminton service return performance (hitting speed, hitting accuracy, and swing posture) were investigated in a school-based physical education (PE) setting. Two groups of 30 and 29 Grade-11 schoolboys, respectively, were trained using conventional and imagery teaching methods in four 70-min weekly PE lessons. The students' imagery ability was classified (as low or high) using a questionnaire. Three-way mixed analysis of variance was employed to determine the effects of teaching method, imagery ability, and performance test (before and after the PE lessons) on the performance. This study discovered significant effects of imagery ability on hitting speed; performance test and the teaching method-performance test interaction on hitting accuracy; and imagery ability and performance test on swing posture. In conclusion, badminton imagery training was discovered to positively exert different effects on students with differing imagery ability in a school-based PE setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]