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Towards the end of the semester in Kinesiology 361 we discussed mental practice. This topic stuck out to me because we used to do this in our track practices. Every Friday at the end of practice we would stretch and relax in a quiet room. Our coach would have us visualize and picture ourselves having good starts out of the blocks. He would have us mentally practice going over all of the things we would do, so that when we were at a meet, it would just be automatic. After doing this in high school it was interesting to learn about it in class this semester. The thing that really stood out to me was the fact that the evidence shows no real improvement in already learned tasks from mental practice. It would be interesting to know if the mental practice we did in track really had any effect on our performance in meets. It could have worked for the newer athletes since they did not have a lot of practice with the skills we were going over. Overall, I still think it was helpful because it was a type of training that we were able to do no matter the conditions or the health of the athlete.

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Procedural vs Declarative Memory and Teaching Snowboarding

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Procedural vs Declarative Memory and Teaching Snowboarding

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When I was younger I wanted to do more activities in the winter, so I decided to try out snowboarding. I had a lot of fun and went consistently for about three winters straight. After about three years one of my friends was interested in trying it out and wanted me to tell him how to do it. At this point I was definitely not a pro, but I did have the basics down and was even starting to learn some tricks. I realized when I tried to tell my friend how to snowboard that I was coming up with nothing. I could not vocalize, very well at least, the different ways you lean back and for when you go down the hill or even begin to explain how to do some tricks. What was weird though was that when we went snowboarding I was able to show him and perform all the things I could not vocalize.
I realize now that the reason I could not tell my friend all the different steps was because it was in my procedural memory not my declarative. Procedural memory is that which you can perform, but is hard to explain. Declarative memory are facts and information that you can explain to someone. After snowboarding for a couple years, the basics had moved from my declarative memory into my procedural. All of this would explain why I was able to perform the task but not effectively describe it.

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Ever since I was young, I have had pretty bad hand writing. Early on I noticed that it seemed like whenever a girl had to write something, their handwriting always looked really good. I have always wondered why it seemed like girls just inherently have better handwriting than guys. After this semester of 361, I have gained some in sight on this topic. According to individual differences, women tend to perform better on fine motor tasks as compared to men. I think that handwriting would qualify as a fine motor task. Also I have heard that women's fine motor skills develop at an earlier age than men's and so when we are taught handwriting in school, women's fine motor skills are more developed and thus women perform better. I do not know if I can use this as an excuse for my terrible handwriting to this day, but I am sure going to try.

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When I was in high school, I was a part of the track and cross-country teams. until taking this class, I never realized the crucial role that proprioception plays in a simple task like running. After learning about proprioception and watching the movie in class about the man who lost his sense of proprioception, I realized how hard it would have been to participate in these sports if I did not have this sense. Proprioception is responsible for telling your body where it is in space. Without this sense it is incredible hard to control your limbs because you brain isn't getting any feedback about where they are relative to your body. From the film we watched in class, I learned that without your sense of proprioception it is basically impossible to walk. The man in the movie was capable of it, but he had to think and visualize every step before he made them. It is incredible that he can walk, but still virtually impossible for him to run. This section of the kinesiology 361 curriculum really interested me. I was intrigued by the topic of losing a sense and learning how to function afterwards.

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Bimanual Coordination and Failed Guitar Dreams

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Bimanual Coordination and Failed Guitar Dreams

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Bimanual Coordination describes a set of skills or actions where the brain must control multiple movements at a time, such as two limbs simultaneously. There are two types of bimanual coordination, symmetrical and asymmetrical. Symmetrical bimanual coordination refers to an action where two limbs are doing the same thing, such as rowing a row boat. Asymmetrical bimanual coordination refers to actions where two limbs are doing different tasks, such as playing guitar. Symmetrical bimanual coordination tasks are easier for us to do because our bodies prefer to do tasks where we are doing the same thing.

I wish someone would have told me this when I was fourteen and really wanted to learn to play the guitar. Maybe I could have done some asymmetrical tasks and seen that my likely hood of performing well on asymmetrical tasks really was not that high. For some reason even after a decent amount of practice I just couldn't get much better at playing the guitar. Don't get me wrong, I am sure I was not practicing enough or really the correct way, but something about have my right-hand strum and my left hand hold down cords just did not function well. Because of this, I sadly was not able to follow my dreams of becoming a musician.