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Basketball was life! Well, it was until I fractured my left hand. When I first got into basketball, I would play with my dominant hand (right) most of the time. One day I was being overly-confident and saying that I was too skilled to be using my right hand (even though I sucked) when playing against my friends. So one day, I challenged my friend to a pick-up game but with a special condition, I would only use my left hand while he uses both hands. During the game, I was completely off with my left-handed layups. Sometimes I would air-ball my shots. My friend won the game with 11 points while I had a whopping 0 points. We proceeded to start another game but within 2 minutes of the game, I had fallen on my left hand and fractured it. I had to get a cast with my left hand and refrain from using it for about three months. During these three months, I would practice playing basketball (against my parents' orders) and shoot a bunch of right-handed layups. After the 3 months had passed, I noticed that my left hand also improved with its layups. This is described with the transfer of learning concept. My left hand had improved because of the practice of my right hand. This process is described with the Transfer-Appropriate Processing Theory. Because the cognitive demands of performing a layup is essentially the same with the left hand versus the right hand, the higher degree of similarity will influence bilateral transfer. The TAP Theory can be explained with the General Motor Program Theory where the muscle selection parameters are similar for the right hand and the left hand. When the right hand performs the layup, sub-threshold commands are also sent to the left hand but the left hand does not perform the full movement because the muscles are primed to not move.

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As a teenager, I was pretty impatient and I would get bored easily. It was probably the hormones that got to me. In middle school, I would play football with my friends during our lunch break. As the quarterback, the speed of the game was in my hands.

As the ball was hiked, I scanned the field for an open teammate. It was the perfect opportunity! He had broken apart from the defense and was near the end zone. I attempted to pass the ball but the football was chucked in the opposite direction and was intercepted by the other team. The Speed Accuracy Trade-off described by Fitts' Law states that as speed increases, accuracy is compromised or vice versa. Why did the ball go into the hands of the opposing team? I probably did not know the detailed language of why my pass was so inaccurate but now I know that because I attempted my pass so quickly without controlling my speed, my accuracy was compromised. As I continued to practice tossing the football, I learned that I needed to slow down my passes to an optimal speed that would allow me to be more accurate. This optimized aiming process is explained by a two-stage process: 1) Initial adjustment (impulse) phase and 2) Current-control phase. In middle school, I would act impulsively with a ballistic arm movement without controlling it. What I learned was that the initial movement could be impulsive and powerful, but I would have to make sure to control my pass once the football is about to leave my hand.

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From being a novice driver to the current driver I am today, I feel almost as if I am Steph Curry, but on the road. When I was 18, I thought why I still had not gotten my license yet. All my friends received their licenses when they were 16 yet I was over here riding my bike and feeling like I am in middle school compared to everyone else. I told my parents to teach me how to drive and they responded with such hesitance that I did not understand. Once I finally convinced them, I realized why they did not allow me to drive at a younger age. They feared other drivers potentially hurting their son (me) and they instilled this fear into me.
While I first learned how to drive, it was very difficult for me because I was in the Cognitive Stage of Fitts and Posner's Three Stage Model. One day I would driving with seemingly no mistakes while the other days I would be side swiping trash bins. During this stage, I am exploring strategies of how to turn the steering wheel and how much force I should press onto the gas. In the second stage, the Associative Stage, I have figured out how quickly to turn my steering wheel, when to turn my steering wheel, and how much force I should apply to the gas pedal when I am attempting to parallel park in between cars. Slowly but surely I have improved for each attempt. In this stage I am able to detect when I am making or close to making an error by hitting or almost hitting the parked cars. By the final stage, the Autonomous Stage, I do not have to put so much mental effort in trying to park correctly. I am now able to smoothly move into a parking space without hesitation or cues.

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"Dad, what's basketball?" Once I asked this question, my dad already knew it was time to teach me how to play his favorite sport, basketball. During the early 2000's, it was the Kobe and Shaq era and every sports media mentioned how dominant they were as a duo. There were documentaries that explained how Kobe Bryant has become so well versed in his skills. "Kobe gets into the gym at 5 am, 3-4 hours before his teammates let alone his staff start to trickle into the gym. My dad had an intrinsic sense that I was going to be an athlete, maybe not a professional athlete, but some sort of athlete. He began by giving me complex tips and advice about how to play basketball. It was at this moment he realized, that he was only talking to a kindergartner. He continued with his excitement by teaching me the basics: dribbles, layups, and jump shots.

At 5 years old, I had no idea what any of those were. I just knew that I had to flick the ball up into a hoop and hope that it went into the circular ring. I did not know there were any methodologies or more specifically, "right" or "wrong ways" to play. This is when my dad came into play. Because I had no prior experience to basketball, I did not have any intrinsic feedback about how my body should feel after shooting the ball. Every time I shot the ball up, my dad provided me with augmented feedback. He explained and showed me how to hold the ball and how the ball should " smoothly roll off my palms and fingers and not have the movement feel so abrupt." His augmented feedback was essential for me to acquire my jump shot and soon develop task-intrinsic feedback by acknowledging when the shot looked smooth. My dad being older, did not want to stay outside with me any longer and allowed me to practice my jump shot by myself. I was able to detect when the shot felt awkward whether I put too much or too little power in the shot.

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The lights turn on, the music is booming, the crowd goes into a frenzy... Who would have thought the moment had come? Growing up, I had always watched sports on TV. I could feel the hype, the energy, the cheers that shifted from the arena to my living room. I wanted to be just like the professional athletes I had seen running through the tunnels. The Kobe Bryants, the Odell Beckhams, the Shaquille O'neals.... I had always seen them being "in the zone" and performing on the playing field or court as if they were not phased by anyone or anything.  I have always wondered, "what's it like being in the zone?" What exactly do they do?

It was not until I joined my volleyball team in high school did I get a peak into what "the zone" was. Before the games, I would go through the strategies and playbook that my coach had drawn up for my team and me. Because I was the captain, I had to make sure everything went perfect. Even though realistically nothing is set in stone, I went through those plays, tweaked them in my head, and imagined the outcome with internal imagery. I actively rehearsed the sets and the spikes that I would have the set up for my team. I considered every situation. "What if there was a defensive specialist on the court that bumped every ball I spiked?" I used my cognitive imagery to produce an alternative attack, maybe tipping the ball instead of hitting it into the back court. Being a detail oriented player, I went through the different types of tips: a tip left, a tip right, a tip straight down... Based on the Cognitive View hypothesis about mental practice, my methodology would fall under this hypothesis because my predictions help me learn new strategies and decipher which actions are most appropriate for the situation during the volleyball game. These strategies and and predictions are made while I am in the zone, right before a game.