This original study aimed to evaluate the effects of MI consisting of imagining successful forehands and backhands, after each unforced errors, on groundstroke performance in tennis players without -experts. The main results of this experiment show that players in the imagery group improved their performance in the ball-launcher task. Indeed, the latter have significantly improved the precision of their returns towards the back of the tennis court while reducing the number of unforced errors.
In addition, players who benefited from MI during practice sessions also significantly reduced the number of unforced errors during match situations (i.e., tie-breaks) made in the post-test, in comparison with the pre-test. Finally, and although the difference was not statically different, the players in the imagery group still obtained a baseline ball percentage 10% higher than that of the control group at the post-test. These results, which validate our first hypothesis, confirm previous work in the literature which has shown beneficial effects of MI on learning (Robin & Flochlay, 2017) and motor performance (Simonsmeier et al., 2020), particularly in racquet sports (Cece et al., 2020) and more specifically in tennis (e.g., Cherappurath et al., 2020; de Sousa Fortes et al., 2019; Dominique et al., 2021; Morais et al., 2019; Robin & Dominique, 2022) with young non-expert players (Cherappurath et al., 2017; Dereceli, 2019; Di Corrado et al., 2020; Dohme et al., 2020; Guillot et al., 2013; Robin et al., 2022; 2023).
As mentioned by Guillot et al. (2013), the use of MI, in addition to real practice, can promote the improvement of shot precision and reduce the variability of performance in tennis whether in a context of low uncertainty (e.g., serving or with the ball launcher) but also in situations of greater uncertainty (e.g., match or tie-break). The results of this experiment also confirm the positive effects of performing MI on the field in sports clothing (Guillot et al., 2005), with the racket in hand (Guillot et al., 2012) and integrated into training sessions (Dominique et al., 2020; Robin & Dominique, 2022). Indeed, access to mental representations, serving as support for the mental simulation of actions during MI, can be facilitated by the context and the environment in which the imagery is performed (Hall., 2001; Guillot et al ., 2005; Robin & Joblet, 2018). In addition, we may also envisage that simulating a successful tennis action, after a real error made in a match context specific to each athlete, would make young tennis players even more active and involved in their learning process (Robin & Flochlay, 2017). The use of MI could help athletes act as active agents in their own improvement of baseline tennis performance.
The results obtained in this experiment also show that the players who used MI improved their self-efficacy score, leading to their success in ball launcher task, which validates our second hypothesis. The results of this study confirm those of previous research studies, which show that MI also has a motivational function (Hall et al., 1992; Hardy, 1998; Simonsmeier et al., 2020) and can be used by tennis players and coaches to improve self-confidence and feelings of competence or self-efficacy (Crespo & Reid, 2007; Robin & Dominique, 2022; Weinberg & Jackson, 1990). Since self-efficacy is known to be a powerful “predictor” of sports performance (Feltz et al., 2008), any intervention allowing it to be increased will be useful for coaches and beneficial for players (Weinberg & Jackson, 1990). Given that MI can increase the feeling of competence, self-confidence and motor performance, we encourage players and coaches to use motor imagery, during practice sessions and especially after unforced errors in order to simulate actions corrected by the player himself (Gmamdya et al., 2023). As an extension of this study, it would be interesting to test whether the performance improvements would be greater when the players benefit from feedback from the coach, concerning their previous fault, before carrying out the MI as observed by Robin et al. (2020) in a football accuracy task. Additional research work will soon be carried out in our laboratory to test this hypothesis.
Although similar to previous research that has used similar procedures (e.g., Cherappurath et al., 2020; Féry & Morizot, 2000; Guillot et al., 2013; Robin et al., 2022), the number of participants per group (N = 12) was relatively small, limiting the power of the statistical analyses, which is why the results obtained in this study must be interpreted with caution and should be confirmed with other studies with larger samples. In addition, it is possible that the players in the control group were less motivated than those in the imagery group due to the experimental conditions, which may also have prevented them from realizing MI after certain errors as some players seem to do on tennis court. Finally, although this may seem counterintuitive due to the potentially negative effects on athlete’s performance that this could cause, the fact of not having an experimental group imagining themselves making a mistake could be considered a limitation of this study to control the effect of pure MI.