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As stated previously, I played central midfielder in soccer for my whole life. Playing in the center of the field, I had to constantly be aware of my surrounding teammates, opponents, and where the ball was. This required me to lock on to certain components of the game depending on the situation. For example, when defending, I would pay attention to where the ball was located and position myself between the ball and the goal, or between the ball and an attacker. I would also need to pay attention to where my teammates were to see if they could cover an attacker that might be running behind me. As I was attacking, I would need to switch my attention to where my strikers and wings were, and also where the defenders were, in order to distribute them the ball efficiently and move the attack up field. Depending on the situation, my visual attention would switch from different elements of the game in order to effectively help my team. This strategy of switching my focus was developed over years of playing soccer and understanding how the game would flow from past experience. When I was younger, I didn't switch my attention on these different elements, but mainly spent most of my time paying attention to where the ball was and how I could get the ball instead of focusing on attackers and defenders. This shows how with time, experts start to develop more efficient strategy for trying to find cues that help them be successful in a task, whereas beginners spend more time paying attention to cues that don't necessarily lead to improving the task.

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After finishing my final year of soccer in high school, I started to help coach a U-11 soccer team. At first, I was just there to help demonstrate drills, etc; but after a few months I was comfortable starting to help the kids and give them feedback on their skills. By the summer, I was running practices and creating drills for the kids to go through. Before I could do this though, I had to understand the best way to give these kids feedback on the skills they needed to work on. I watched the head coach give them pointers as they practiced, and noticed that he usually gave them positive encouragement, and typically gave negative encouragement every 4 or 5 comments. I also noticed that he never gave them feedback during the drills, but rather in between repetitions, or he would pull the player aside to talk to them. As I started giving feedback to the players, I would make sure to give encouragement more often than I would give criticism. This is similar to the sandwich method we discussed in class. I also made sure that if I wanted to demonstrate or help a player with a skill, I would make sure that it would be in between repetitions of the drill, so that they had an opportunity to make improvements next time. This is similar to learning about terminal feedback from class. Coaching the kids was a positive experience for me, as it also allowed me to understand how I liked to be instructed. When growing up, I didn't like receiving feedback after every trial, but instead I liked to be told every once in a while if I was performing the right movements. This allowed me to try and improve in between feedback, and see if I had the ability to fix my own mistakes.  This is how I ended up giving feedback to the youth players, I would give them feedback every 3 or 4 attempts so that they also had a chance to fix their mistakes on the skills.
(disclaimer:  Unfortunately, I do not have any actual pictures of me coaching this team...)

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After finishing my final year of soccer in high school, I started to help coach a

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After finishing my final year of soccer in high school, I started to help coach the

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When learning how to first play soccer, I was taught a variety of new skills, one of those being how to properly kick the ball.  Kicking the ball at such a young age was tough, as I didn't know how to properly make contact with it or move my leg in the correct motions. I can remember when I was a little kid, my coach would mimic and talk us through the motions in order to teach us, just like the cognitive stage of Fitts' Model. My passes to my teammates during practice were inconsistent, as I would sometimes pass it too far to the left or too far to the right. Later on, as I started to practice more, I was able to start to distinguish what movements made passing the ball better, and how to angle my foot in order to make more accurate passes. This is consistent with the second stage of Fitts' model, the associative stage. Finally, by the time I was a teenager and started playing soccer competitively, I was able to execute passes with both feet, without looking, very accurately. This is because this skill had become almost automatic, just like explained by the third stage of Fitts' Model, the autonomous stage. I was finally able to start executing this simple skill automatically, all because of the learning I acquired through practice.

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A key aspect of all sports is developing coordination in order to move your body and react to external stimuli presented to you. In soccer, this is done by understanding how to react to the ball and the players around you, they require you to move and use your proprioceptors in order to manipulate your movements. In golf though, there is a little more complicated task involved in the coordination of a swing. I first learned how to golf as a young child, as my parents would take me mini-golfing and eventually would buy me my first set of golf clubs. Swinging a golf club takes immense coordination. There are many factors in the swing: First, you are using both arms simultaneously to perform the swing, while keeping your lower body and head still in order to reduce the chance of an error during your swing. Second, you are twisting your core and pelvic area in order to produce a torque that will generate force for your swing. Both of these actions must be done simultaneously and within a small time window in order to make contact and hit the ball. This requires a golfer to be able to have coordinative structures, so that the brain can send a signal to the structure in order to perform the movement. Lastly, you must be able to keep your eyes centered on the ball at all times, in order to keep the target for your swing to hit. This requires golfers to have good hand-eye coordination, and a good vestibular-ocular reflex so that the eyes do not move from the ball as the head slightly tilts. This coordination is something that can be practiced, and with time can be mastered.

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The Difference Between Abilities and Skills

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The Difference Between Abilities and Skills

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As a young child, my parents started to get me involved with sports. One of these sports was soccer, which I grew to love and play even to this day. Soccer has many defining factors that can make you a good player. These factors can range from physical form, physical endurance, speed, technical ability, and so on. What is important to note is that not all of these are achievable by every athlete. That is what defines an ability from a skill. An ability is something that can't be modified, no matter how much you practice at it. Abilities can be thought of as something you are born with. Skills, on the other hand, stem from abilities and can be improved with practice. As I developed as a soccer player, there were definite gaps between my play and those of others. I wasn't the fastest player on the team, nor did I have the quickest footwork that allowed me to perform high level technical skills, but what I did possess was a great ability to pass, shoot, and create opportunities for my teammates. This is what led me to be a central midfielder, instead of a striker where it is key to be quick in order to run past defenders or tall to win aerial headers. I wasn't born with a tall physique, or an ability to run fast, but I was able to improve my skills of passing and shooting in order to develop into the player I have become.

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Growing up, I have been very involved with sports.  While going through this class, there have been many topics that can help to define different methods that my coaches have used to instruct me, different reasons for why I have advanced in skills, or even for why I may not have advanced in skills.  Some of these reasons are biological, some are mental, some are physical; but what they all have in common is they affect how a motor ability is learned and executed.