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Bounce Bounce.... Breath... Bounce Bounce.... Adjust Grip... Breath.... Toss

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Bounce Bounce.... Breath... Bounce Bounce.... Adjust Grip... Breath.... Toss

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Tiebreakers. A word dreaded by the leading team and a word cherished by the trailing team. In tennis, when both players or teams are tied 6 games to 6 games (6-6) a tiebreaker is played first to 7 points to determine the winner of the set. The most critical part of the point during a tiebreaker is the serve because it determines how the point will most likely turn out. Personally, my coach told me during these high stake situations to focus in on my serving routine and not switch it up focusing on every little point. When recently learning about mental practice, I remember going through my routine incase we were to get into this rare situation. I now know this as mental practice, in which I was performing internal imagery thinking about each bounce, breath, and twirl of the racquet. At the time I did not believe it had too much of an impact but after learning about the benefits, I have started to question how many faults I would have had if I had not practiced my serving routine mentally as much as I did.

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Speed and Accuracy Trade-Off: Writing During Finals

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Speed and Accuracy Trade-Off: Writing During Finals

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During this finals week, I have an English 150 Essay that I have to write. While I want to be able to write neatly and have my writing legible, I am more focused on finishing my essay prompt in the time given. Fitts's Law states that as one performs a task more quickly, they tend to be less accurate due to a "Trade-off" of speed for accuracy.

Although the professors have not commented on my handwriting on previous essays, I know that my handwriting is generally poor, and it significantly worsens when I am rushed. This is a prime example of Fitts's law because as time dwindles, I begin to sacrifice my legibility (accuracy) in order to finish (speed).

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The Needy Drunk During Happy Hour- Attention

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The Needy Drunk During Happy Hour- Attention

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Last summer, I got my bartending license and applied for a position at State Street Brats. I specifically told them I could work Tuesday and Thursday nights because I knew they were notorious for some specials and always being very busy. One can imagine how lucrative these shifts are for bartenders, especially later in the night when the DJ is blaring music and the line for drinks is wrapped around the bar twice. Although this craziness is often fun because the shift seems to fly by, my stress levels soar to new heights each week, and I'm not sure how much higher they can go.

According to the Various Theories of Attention, the attention capacity for a normal person is fixed. Therefore, one can only handle so much. Thursday nights around 11pm is when Brats becomes busiest. During this rush, I typically make multiple drinks for one person, flip a coin to determine if they get a discount, and ring them up, all while singing along to the DJ's music, and preparing to serve whoever I think is next in line. Even writing all of that down, I still feel like I forgot to include the random additional tasks that I do. However, the point is that bartending takes a immense amount of focus and multi-tasking abilities. With all of the different stimuli present during my shifts, I feel as if some of my drinks may be too strong or too weak due to the sensory overload and the interference that occurs. These stimuli all fight for my attention, as the Central-Resource theory states. This may result in me serving the wrong drink or pouring too much or too little liquor into a drink. One solution the Bottleneck Theory proposes is that I should attempt to block out distracting stimuli, and focus on one stimuli at a time, in order to get the drink correct before I move on to a new stimulus.

The GIF above exhibits a dream of mine as a bartender; I have always wanted to be able to do cool tricks with all of the drinks that I pour. However, I never have any down time, so the GIF represents the amount of drinks I feel I serve in a 5 minute rush period.

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When I was younger I always wanted to coach baseball since I was so passionate about sports and I loved working with people. A couple of years ago, I got the opportunity to give lessons for pitching at STIKS academy for kids on select baseball teams.

At first I started out giving live feedback after each pitch but I quickly realized that this was one of the most ineffective ways to give feedback to the kids as they would resort to the mistakes they made during the next session. I decided I was going to start recording the kids pitching from the stretch and give them Verbal Knowledge of performance after the pitch was thrown by breaking down the videos and telling them. This is considered augmented feedback in kinesiology because I was using an outside source (my phone to record) to provide feedback about form. More specifically in this instance I believe the augmented feedback enhanced the skill of the players and allowed them to reach a higher level of performance. If we break down the video, we can see that he starts off with great form which is very promising; however, right after this picture was taken, the pitcher does not effectively push off with his back leg which starts a chain reaction of things that go wrong. Since he does not effectively push off with his back leg, he relies more on his arm which can put strain on his back, elbow, and shoulder instead of his legs and abdomen which is what is wanted. Following that is an arm angle that is very dangerous and may put the pitcher in danger of hurting his elbow even more. After giving this descriptive Verbal Knowledge of performance I would then give him prescriptive knowledge by starting with drills that will individually break down the components of the throwing motion to help with the form after the push off.

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From Top in the State to Top in the House: Positive Transfer

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From Top in the State to Top in the House: Positive Transfer

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Tennis has always been a love of mine ever since I picked up the racquet freshman year. Not knowing if I was ever going to play again, I saw a ping pong table in my freshman year dorm, Witte, and decided that I should play sometime to see if I had any skill in ping pong. After a few games of adjusting to the smaller "racquet", "court", and ball I felt as if I was one of the better players that in the group of friends that I had made early on in the semester.

My history with tennis had helped me prepare for a similar but new task; this is a representation of positive transfer of my tennis skills into the learning of ping pong or table tennis as some call it. The reason why I was able to transfer these skills so easily is explained by the Identical Elements Theory which states why positive transfer occurs. The theory states, that since tennis and ping pong share similar component parts such as wrist action when hitting and hand-eye coordination prior to hitting and after making contact with the tennis and ping pong ball, that the skills are able to transfer over more easily than if the two activities had no relation at all. This is considered positive transfer because the transfer of skills from tennis to ping pong had a beneficial effect and experience on my performance.

The Gif above shows what I think I look like when I play and the moves that I believe I can perform (player in blue) when in reality I'm an average player!