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When I was very young I started to play hockey. I was not a very good skater at first, but I picked it up quickly. Something I distinctively remember as being difficult for all of us that were learning was performing a hockey stop.

However, there was another activity that I had learned and practiced for years: skiing. In addition to the pizza/french fries approach to slowing down/stopping, I had learned another way to stop that was very similar to hockey stop. My practice of this skill allowed me to be the first on my team to do the hockey stop.

By definition there was a transfer of learning. I gained proficiency in one skill by practicing another skill. Because learning the ski stop helped me to become proficient in the hockey stop, this would be an instance of positive transfer.

The identical elements theory makes the most sense here. The two skills require nearly identical movement patterns and force generation.

The following image and the image of the ski stop depict the similarities of the two movement patters (could not figure out how to put two images in the same post).

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In high school I was learning to play the drums, but I was having a difficult time with the drum roll. When performing such a movement, the drumstick must strike the drum in an anti-phase sequence. In other words, one stick is traveling down while the other is traveling up, and one is striking the drum while the other is at the peak height of the upstroke. However, as I increased the speed, my drumsticks would soon be traveling in-phase, and each drumstick would be hitting the drum at exactly the same time. While I could not move any faster, my drum roll was only half as fast as it could have been.

This makes logical sense as during bimanual coordination, we strongly prefer to perform symmetric movements to asymmetric ones. The above scenario is an example of an unintended phase transition. As the speed was increased, a new attractor presented that minimized energy expenditure and resulted in a new steady-state of systems.

The GIF below presents the correct anti-phase movement of a proper drumroll.

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As a running back, we are required to make split second decisions on the field. Whether or not to cut through a hole, bounce a run, cutback, lower a should, or initiate a move such as as spin or stiff-arm. We do a lot of training to actually achieve proficiency in executing a skill, but you are only capable of getting so much practice performing the skill with live defenders. Something I have utilized over the years is a form of mental imagery that I believe has allowed me to make these decisions faster (reduced reaction time).

This is an example of performance preparation of a well learned skill. My mental practice entitles visualization of situations, from both first person and third person viewership. I am using the specific cognitive type of imagery while mentally performing a certain move on the football field (table 19.1 of textbook). In these situations I see myself running the ball, with situational blocks and pursuing defenders. When a defenders gets close enough, I envision myself making a move, such as a spin. This requires evaluating the timing of initiation, time to complete the move, which direction I will spin, which foot to plant with, etc. This form of mental imagery seems to follow the brain activity hypothesis. I am creating neurophysiological patterns that I can later access more efficiently. This is possible because fMRI scans show that during mental imagery we are still using the same brain pathways as the physical movement. Planning and programming is being refined without actual movement. Therefore, when I go to make these movement in real time on the field, my decision making process for selecting the correct move and is faster.

This strategy is useful when I want to practice and no defenders are present or when I have sufficiently trained my body to the point where more work without recovery may be damaging.

The image presented below represents an accurate representation of mental imagery for a situation in which I would use a stiff-arm or stiff-arm/spin combination move.

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We have probably all had that moment while we were driving in heavy traffic, or we were nervous about getting in an accident for some reason, and we opted to turn down the radio to help our driving. Now this may not inertly make a lot of sense. The sound of the radio does not effect our movements, vision, or the environment around us. Yet everyone does it, so what is going on?

One can explain this with the central resource theory of attention. This theory states that we have a fix capacity of attention. So when we find ourselves in a situation where our attention for driving properly increases (for me - driving my moped in the rain between classes when traffic is backed up), we have to turn down the radio (take out our earbuds), because we cannot exceed this current attention capacity. Despite the fact that listening to the music is only taking up a small amount of our attention, increasing the demand while driving under these conditions means that one of the tasks will suffer (likely driving), or both tasks will suffer. We then elect to focus on driving and turn the radio off.

Note: under the resource theories, attention capacity is not fixed, but flexible depending on the circumstances. In the above situation, we are assuming that circumstances have not changes sufficiently to alter attention capacity.

The meme below represents the common situation that many people experience but cannot explain until they examen different theories of attention.

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My sophomore year of football we got a new coaching staff. During the summer before our upcoming season, the new strength and conditioning coaches had a variety of new drills and skills that were very foreign to us. One particular skill gave us a lot of trouble. The drill involved agility bags and a variety of different movements in one long sequence. Side hops over the first bag and back, shuttle step over the first 2 bags and back, repeat for 3 bags, repeat for 4 bags, and finally turn and sprint through the fifth bag. Some of the tasks were not familiar to us. Additionally, performing the sequence of tasks/transitioning was very difficult. The first week none of us had been particular successful. The following week, I was the one of the few players who had been able to find success, and performed the task much more quickly than the rest of the players.

During the week between the two trials, I had engaged in part practice. I had subconsciously made this decision, likely due to the high complexity of the skill. First, I performed the hops, the shuttle step, and the sprint separately to gain proficiency in each. The next day, I worked on the two transitions between the skills. Finally, I reverted back to whole practice. This was largely representative of the segmentation approach.

The image below represents the shuffle step movements performed in the middle of the serial task.