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As a kid I grew up watching a LOT of hockey.  My older brother (by 7 years) began playing at the age of 4 and continued to play throughout high school. We would spend weekend year round traveling throughout the state to watch him and his team compete in tournaments. Because of this, I grew a strong passion for hockey at a very young age. I started my first skating lessons, like my 2 younger brothers as well, at the age of 3. As my skating skills progressed I gradually shifted my practice to other parts of my game such as shooting. At my house growing up we had a large open basement with a tarp, a net, and lots of holes in the walls from shooting pucks. I would go downstairs and shoot pucks as much as I could throughout week nights to improve my shot. Little did I know at this time that the type of practice I was doing was just as important as the quantity. Even as I grew into a more skilled shooter I would always practice in blocked conditions. I would shoot around 50 wrist shots, followed by 50 snap shots, followed by 50 slap shots. While this practice was making my shot better, the low interference with this type of practice may have not been the most efficient way for me to transfer my skills onto the ice during a game. Instead, I should have been performing a more randomized practice in which I would switch up the shot type after each shot. This increased amount of interference would have allowed me to continue to develop different strategies for each and every shot which would have better transferred the skills into my memory. Who knows, if I would have practiced with more randomization, I may have been drafted into the NHL by now!

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My grandparents bought me my first set of golf clubs when I was only 5 years old.  My grandpa would take me to the driving range and help me work on my swing, showing me which clubs to use in certain situations and how to swing each one of them.  "Keep your feet planted on the ground and keep your eyes on the ball as you swing", he would tell me.  At a young age, and with very little experience at golf at the time, his voice would be in my head for every swing.  I would talk myself through the process of bringing the club back with my front arm as straight as possible while keeping my eyes focused on the ball and my front foot grounded.  I would then tell myself to swing directly through the ball without turning the face of the club inward or outward to strike a clean shot down the fairway without slicing or drawing the ball too much.  As I grew older, became more experienced, and began golfing on actual golf courses, the way I approached every shot changed.  I no longer talked myself through how to perform each and every shot.  I instead kept a clear mind and let my muscle patterns do the work. This transition from declarative to procedural memory took a lot of time on the golf course, but with lots of practice, I was able to transform myself from a novice golfer to a (self-proclaimed) expert.

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Face-offs are an extremely important part in hockey. When the ref drops the puck onto the face-off dot, it is important for your team to win possession of the puck so you can make your way away from your team's net and toward your opposing team's net. One way to increase a center's reaction time is to take advantage of temporal anticipation. Temporal anticipation is when a person can anticipate when the stimulus is going to arrive in order to decrease their reaction time. During a face-off in hockey, the center can focus their attention on the slight movements of the referees hand as he is holding the puck above the face-off dot and waiting to drop it. When the center sees the slight movement of the referees wrist, they are able to anticipate when the puck will hit the surface of the ice and when they should move their stick to win possession of the puck for their team. In this circumstance, temporal anticipation gives a center a great advantage over their opponent if they are not looking at the movements of the referee's hand.

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The main reason I love Wisconsin, aside from the good beer, good cheese, and friendly people, is that we get to experience the full effects of each of the 4 seasons. We get to enjoy just under half of the year playing the snow and just under half of the year playing in the water. One of my favorite outdoor activities in the winter is downhill skiing. I love the rush of cruising down a steep hill with the wind in your face. However, once the end of winter rolls around and I start getting sick of scraping ice off my car windows every morning, I begin to look forward to the summer months and what they have to offer. Having access to a boat makes these months even more enjoyable. I first started water skiing when I was about 12 years old. My parents had bought a boat and I was extremely excited to try it out. When I took a group of friends out on the water, I started to notice that they were having a much harder time staying up on the skis than I was having, and I was just starting like they were. I came to realize that none of them were into skiing like I had always been. These 2 tasks must have had a high amount of positive transfer between them. The identical elements theory describes that 2 tasks that share a greater number of similar elements are expected to transfer more highly than 2 tasks that share fewer similar elements. These similar elements between water skiing and downhill skiing can be broken down into 2 parts. The first is observable movement patterns. To the naked eye it is clear to see that both tasks have very similar movement patterns. They both require the ability to balance with your legs on a pair of skis. The second part is elaborated automatism. This component refers to the idea that 2 tasks that require similar coordinate forces will transfer better. This is also true between water skiing and downhill skiing. In both tasks, the skier must exert enough force with their legs to maintain an upright position and balance their center of mass over their skis.

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Heading a soccer ball, while not always the most enjoyable part of the game, is a necessary skill to perform in a game to maintain possession.  As the goaltender boots the ball from their own net, opposing players scramble to get into position to make a play on the ball in any way they can (without using their hands of course).  This photo demonstrates myself doing just that on my 8th grade soccer team.  While the ball was leaving the foot of the goal tender, my eyes were focused directly on it.  In order to properly time when I needed to jump to contact the ball with my head, I had to determine the time to contact (Tau).  In mathematical terms, Tau = 1 / (rate of expansion).  The rate of expansion is the rate that the image of the ball projected on the retina expands as the ball moves closer. However, in order to accurately determine when the ball would approach me, I also had to have some prior knowledge of object that was approaching me. Thankfully I was familiar with the size and shape of the soccer balls used during practice. As the critical event of Tau was reached, a series of motor commands were sent through my body that allowed me to jump and flex the necessary muscles in my neck to hopefully head to the ball to a fellow teammate.