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One of my favorite activities that I am completely inept at is Latin Dancing. But my friends and I still decide to go every so often. The main reason I am bad at it is most likely the coordination it requires, especially for a continuous task. Latin dancing combines several motor movements and patterns while allowing for a certain degree of freedom in your movements. But perhaps the most difficult part for me in the beginning was how body movements can be in different phase relationships while loosely adhereing to the music.

There are many styles of dancing where they do not follow the pattern that you would expect. This contradicts the attractor state that your body naturally is drawn to. An example of this would be alternating between your left and right lefts to the beat of the music. That would be an attractor state, because it is natural for us to switch between contralateral limbs similar to how we walk. Another aspect of dancing that I found difficult but also funny was maintaining the phase relationship between the legs, hips and upper body. Ideally, you would keep the upper body and the hips out of phase by 180 degrees. Not only does this make the most sense when dancing, but you look absolutely ridiculous if your hips and arms are moving together in the same directions, which I have learned from personal experience!

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Before I came to University, I bought a cheap acoustic guitar from Goodwill wih the intent to learn my favorite songs from my favorite bands. I ended up not touching the guitar until my second year of college when I finally decided to teach myself some songs.

Initially, I had absolutely no idea how to go about playing guitar, and I think I still don't. Yet, I came to realise that the component parts that make up playing the guitar share similar traits with the component parts I used to play the violin. Due to this, I was able to coordinate my hands well enough to memorize and play songs on the guitar even if I had no idea how to read the music or use proper technique.

I believe the most relevant way to explain this positive transfer that ocurred would be through elaborated automatisms, as described by Bernstein. As one plays either the guitar or violin, force coordination and regulation is done on finger placement and movement. Too far or too little movement, and the note will be out of tune or completely wrong. Not only that, but similarities of movement patterns exist. The left hand is used to apply pressure to strings through wrist and finger movement so that the right notes are played when the right hand produces sound.

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Trying to teach the Violin with Verbal Instructions and Demonstrations

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Trying to teach the Violin with Verbal Instructions and Demonstrations

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Some of my most vivid memories involve all those years of violin lessons. Each week, while I dreaded them at the time, I would leave with a new perspective on how to play the violin correctly. Something that had always stuck with me was how my teacher always emphasized the outcome of playing. Instead of focusing on playing each and every note in tune, he would instead have me focus on the melody that enveloped those notes. Not only that, but he would constantly remind me to always be thinking ahead in the music rather than taking it one note at a time. By keeping the focus of attention external, I was better able to coordinate my playing along with the violin and not get caught up in all the details that make up playing the violin.

As I got older, I also started to tutor younger kids with playing the violin. I ended up teaching kids from ages 5 to up to 13. With younger kids, I learned how essential it was to keep things short and succinct, or risk losing their attention completely. Another thing I noticed was how demonstrations were immensely helpful with my younger, less-proficient students. But the older ones learned less from me demonstrating certain things, sometimes even becoming confused or distracted.

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Trying not to choke while playing the Violin

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Trying not to choke while playing the Violin

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Having played violin for the past 18 years now, has taught me many things, such as how to approach the tedious task of practicing. I can say from experience that nothing is more motivating than knowing you have to perform in front of an entire crowd, so you better play well and practice hard. The interesting thing about playing the violin is the night and day difference between a practice and performing environment is. I remember the first time I performed, it was for a violin competition. There was only 1 or 2 judges listening to me, yet my hands were shaking. I could hardly focus, yet alone play well as my mind could not keep up with my coordination. There were too many thoughts in my head. Compared to the casual setting of my practicing, performing was a completely different beast. Suddenly, every wrong note was loud and clear to my ears. Easy parts that I nailed consistenly everytime in my room became the hardest passages I had ever played. Everything that came naturally to me when playing violin instantly fell apart.

While taking this class, I would realise that what essentially happened was that I choked. Due to years of practicing and improving my motor skills with the violin, many aspects had become automatic. The low stakes environment of practicing meant I could play without worry. But performing completely changes that. In a performance, you want to perform the best you can, and that leads to overthinking things. Once you are in your mind, trying to manage everything in a way that is not automatic, this leads to trouble. Eventually, through many performances, I realised that I performed well when I didn't think, but rather let my procedural memory take over. This allowed me to play like how I would in a practice room, which was always when I played best. I have a picture of one of my performances in Spain. While I remember it not being my best, at that point I had already come a long way from my very first performances!

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Trying to powerlift with the Schema Theory

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Trying to powerlift with the Schema Theory

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For the past three years, I have been training in the sport of powerlifting. Originally, I began lifting just as a way to become more healthy and improve myself. But eventually I realised I wanted  strive to lift the most weight as I possibly could, to discover what my limits were. When I came to university, I found people who shared the same interests, which helped begin my journey into powerlifting.

Recently, I competed in my very first powerlifting competition. I had trained extensively for the couple months leading up to the event, and spent almost a year prior to that focusing on my form and technique. An idea that resonated strongly was how I applied the Schema Theory without even knowing it during those months of training.

One of the most important aspects of learning how to lift is getting form and technique down. The entire sport of powerlifting is about trying to lift as much weight as your body physically can. Due to this, being efficient as well as proficient with your movement in the lift is absolutely integral. Any extra movement or distance is more work for your body, and wasted effort. For example, my training had many sets of squats at differing weights. Some weights I could do for 10 reps, while other weight I could only do for 1 or 2. This greater variable practice not only produced greater retention and transfer of skills, but it also helped me establish the rules of the GMP for squatting. By the time I was going to compete, I knew the parameters of the GMP well enough to confidently perform the lift with good form on weight that was near my max. Using the squatting schema, I was able to adapt the force parameter based on my experience with the lift. The picture I chose is my squat attempt of 320lb, which was a personal record for me at the time!