Tool use in sports

It is one of the goals of exercise science to enhance athletic performance basedon physiological adaptions. In this context it is equally important to apply goaloriented training instructions that generate an enhancement of performance ona neurological level, which is a comparably new approach towards performanceincrease. This new approach has its foundation in the eld of neuroscience, morespecically the concept of the body schema. In neurological studies it has alreadybeen shown that hand held objects are integrated into a persons body schema. Theprocess of integrating sports implements into the body schema may be alleviatedby varying the instructions athletes receive. Consequently, the aim of the currentstudy was to investigate if body schema integration of sports implements that canbe dened as a tool occurs in a eld condition.The methods applied in the framework of this book were derived from a study inwhich body schema integration of tools has been shown. The athletes were askedto estimate their hand and ulna length before and after an intervention with theireyes closed by pointing towards anatomical landmarks. The actual measurementswere taken after the post tool use ses