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This final clip was chosen to represent the use of Part-task practice strategies to learn new twisting dives. For a high school varsity diving meet, it is necessary to compete a specific number of dives from 5 different categories. The 5 categories that need to be fulfilled are front, back, inward, reverse, and twist. Front dives and inward were my favorite. I had a large list of dives in both categories to choose from for each meet. The category that I struggled most with throughout high school was the twist category. Most coaches say you are either a “flipper” or a “twister”, and I was definitely a flipper. Twisting was very unnatural to me and struggled to get the correct timing or to decide which direction to pull the twist. Considering this task had high complexity, it was suggested to me by my coach to break down the skill into its component parts. This is known as part-task practice. Part-task practice is beneficial because it reduces the complexity of the skill and allows you to perform each part correctly before attempting the whole skill.

You may wonder, “how is it possible to break a dive into its individual components?”. This is not exactly an easy task for the coach. In order to practice components of the complex back-twist dive, my coach needed to make a set of “drills” that were focused on each step of the dive. The drill that focused on the first part of the dive involved focusing on only my arms and my head. I was told to lay on my back (on a mat on the pool deck) with both of my arms in the air. Then, I would drop one arm to my side and quickly turn my head in that direction. This would create enough momentum to roll me over in a full rotation back to my back. Additional drills that focused on using my whole body were trampoline drills. The trampoline drills allowed me to repetitively practice the individual components of the dive and get my body used to the feeling of twisting. These drills combined segmentation with simplification to help me have a clearer understanding of how to perform this quick and complex task.

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This next gif is silly a representation (from my favorite movie Stick It) of how correctional Augmented Feedback by coaches can negatively affect gymnasts. When I was growing up, one of my friends told me “I don’t like gymnastics because all anyone does is tell me what I’m doing wrong”. Many gymnasts struggle with feeling defeated and sad after a practice of getting one negative comment after the next. I remember feeling this way from time to time at practice, especially when trying to learn new skills. I do realize, however, that providing correctional augmented feedback is a very necessary part of improvement in gymnastics. After all, the ultimate goal of gymnastics is to be as “perfect” as possible. Every bent knee, flexed foot, and misconnection are tenths of a point off of your “perfect” score. Considering augmented feedback from coaches is so prevalent in the sport of gymnastics, the risk of the augmented feedback hindering skill learning is heightened.

In lecture, we learned that augmented feedback can have a negative effect on athletes if it is erroneous, presented concurrently with performance, or presented after every practice trial. I can remember an experience with a past coach in which correctional augmented feedback was provided after each attempt of learning a back-twist tumbling pass. Not only was the feedback discouraging, but it became very confusing and useless. I found that my high school gymnastics coach had more effective strategies of Augmented Feedback. She often let me practice the skill and waited to give feedback until I requested feedback. This strategy is known as “self-selected frequency” of Augmented Feedback. In addition, she typically used the “sandwich approach” when providing feedback on a new skill. She did this by starting with a quick comment of what I did right, letting me know what I did wrong, then finishing with a motivational statement. Utilizing these two strategies helped me grow as a gymnast and kept me motivated to keep trying.

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I chose this photo to represent my experience as a gymnastics instructor for children ages 3 to 13. After practicing and competing gymnastics for about 10 years, I was offered a job as an instructor for gymnastics classes through the recreation department of my high school. I was so excited! Gymnastics was one of my biggest passions and I felt lucky to get opportunity to share this passion with kids. With the help of my coach, I put together a circuit for two events (floor and bars). I felt prepared and eager to start teaching classes. To my surprise, the first day of class came with many challenges. The biggest obstacle I needed to overcome was realizing that “doing” is much different than “teaching”. After years of practice, the basics of gymnastics had become almost second nature to me. I found it very difficult to verbalize to the young gymnasts how to perform basic drills and skills. After taking this course, I now have a much better understanding of why I struggled to explain basic skills to the beginner athletes.

An explanation to the challenge I encountered was presented in the lecture on memory systems. The two major memory systems are Declarative Memory and Procedural Memory. Declarative Memory includes Semantic Memory, which is the memory of facts and general knowledge, and Episodic Memory, which consists of memories of personally experienced events along with their temporal association in subjective time. Procedural Memory, on the other hand, consists of the non-conscious or automatic memories of how to perform skills. Beilock and Carr’s study on expert and novice golfers uncovered that novices depend on Declarative Memory, while experts struggle to access Declarative Memory and tend to depend on their Procedural Memory. Alike to the expert golfer, I was unable to tap into my Declarative Memory to explain skills that were highly practiced and ingrained in my mind. To help me regain these memories, I needed to put myself in the student’s shoes, slowly perform the skill, and redevelop the Declarative Memory necessary to verbally teach the basic skills.

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Getting dropped off at gymnastics practice is one of the first great memories I have. It was the first sport I felt like I was “good at” and the first sport I fell in love with. I started gymnastics around age 4 and began competing at age 8. Coming from a family of two very athletic brothers and a dad who coached baseball, basketball, and football, I was expected to be a multi-sport athlete. Growing up, I seemed to try every different sport there was. Despite my enjoyment and effort with these sports, I was not particularly successful. Throughout middle school, gymnastics continued to be the only sport that I not only enjoyed but also excelled at. When it came time for high school, my parents encouraged me to try one sport for each of the three athletic seasons. I was completely lost and had no clue what other sports I wanted to try. After meeting my new high school gymnastics coach, I realized my “athletic fate” was already chosen for me. She told me that most high school gymnasts join the diving team in the fall and the track team for pole vaulting in the spring. The next thing I knew, I was getting emails and text messages from both the diving coach and the pole-vaulting coach. I decided to give both sports a try and found that I was somewhat of a “natural” at both sports. I found the same love for these sports as I found with gymnastics as a child.

I’ve realized that my success at these three sports supports the General Motor Ability Hypothesis. In lecture, we learned that there was an early notion that claimed there are several different motor abilities that exist in an individual that are closely related and can be characterized in terms of a single, global motor ability. This hypothesis is what was typically used to explain the “all-around athlete”. Although there have been several studies conducted during the 50s and beyond that have debunked this hypothesis, it seems that this notion has carried on. High school coaches tend to believe that when an athlete is successful at one sport, they will excel at a several other sports due to the “single, global motor ability” that these sports share.

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I chose to pair this goofy spongebob gif with a photo of me to represent the impact of Mental Practice on my high school pole-vaulting experience. When I was a freshman in high school, I was encouraged to join the track team and try out pole-vaulting. Considering I was new at the sport, I was able to make big improvements and set new personal records each meet. When Sophomore year came along, my improvements started to get smaller and smaller. I struggled through a very frustrating and disappointing start to my season in which my vaults began to plateau at about 8’6’’. When an athlete experiences a performance plateau, they are typically told to switch up their strategy. My coach knew I needed a new or additional strategy to help me overcome this halt in performance. This was the first time I was introduced to Mental Practice, or what my coach referred to as “mental imagery”. Mental Practice is the active cognitive rehearsal of a physical skill in the absence of overt physical movement.

That year, the biggest problem I was having was not using the correct form to spring over the bar. I was much too impatient and did not let my body fully rotate back to be completely upside-down before I threw the pole. After watching videos of elite vaulters and slow-motion videos of my vaults, I was told to picture myself rocking all the way back and executing the correct form. This is an example of Internal Imagery, which refers to a person imagining being inside of his/her body while performing a skill and experiencing the sensations of the actual situation. At first, I felt rather silly performing this type of practice. After becoming more comfortable with it, I began every track practice with 10 minutes of mental imagery. Studies have shown that neuromotor pathways are likely being activated during mental practice and that the functional anatomy of the brain overlaps with the anatomy involved in controlling motor performance. I find it fascinating that these factors may have contributed to the success of mental imagery during my pole-vaulting season. To my amazement, I was able to reach a new personal record by the end of the season. From that point on, Mental Practice has become a great tool to help me reach my performance goals.