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The joys of being a first year AT student, you're always at the bottom of the training room food chain. By far the most challenging aspect of being a first year AT student is being bombarded by all the athletes' needs, preceptors' instructions, and also your peers' questions. The amount of times I've forgotten my tasks because I was asked to do something else while trying to process the first task has to be in the 20's by now. One guy can only process so much information at once! You would think since most people have either taken this class, are in this class, or already have their degrees, the would understand, but I suppose not.
My inability to process multiple things at once is due to the bottleneck theory of attention. Being that we have a limited capacity for attention and processing happens in a specific order, when too many stimuli are presented at once, you with only be able to allow one of those stimuli to pass through for being identified for a response selection. For example, when I have one person ask my to grab something from the stock room, one person ask me for a massage, and another ask me what we have for homework tonight, I'm not going to be able to respond and perform my duties all at once. Most of the time, I choose to do one request at I time so that i make sure it's done correctly. This causes the bottleneck theory to be set in place at the detection and identification stage, in which I only think of one response instead of multiple.
Below is the picture that I will hang up in my clinic one day so that there is no questions asked when I tell people to wait their turn. Being that I know my limits and what I can and cannot handle, I will let people know that if they skip line of tasks waiting to be done, I will most likely not process it and I will never get it done. Thanks bottleneck theory, for giving me a reason not to be good at multitasking as well as making people put their manners to use. You da man!

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One the most important duties an athletic training student has is carrying out the rehab process with our athletes. This process can be long and difficult, but the felling of seeing your athlete return to play is great. The work outs we give the athletes are pretty hard, especially after an injury, so the feedback we give them is crucial.
When going through their rehab exercises, athletes use both task intrinsic and augmented feedback. For example, if we have an athlete doing ladder drills and they constantly hit the ladder with their feet, they use intrinsic feedback to see that they aren't completing their task even without us having to tell. In contrast, I would say to the player to remember to lift their knees up when going the drill, which may be due to the fact that the athlete isn't to being on their feet after their surgery. This is known as augmented feedback because the athlete is using outside sources to improve their skill in the task they want to complete. Both feedbacks are vital to returning athletes to their sport because allowing them to perform their tasks in correct can lead to plateauing and a decline in performance being that their mistakes will eventually need to be corrected.
The picture below shows an athletic trainer working with his athletes doing ladder drills. As you can see he is paying close attention to their every point to look for points of feedback to give. If he were not around, the athlete would strictly be dependent on his own intrinsic feedback, leaving room for error to occur.

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The best way to learn in athletic training is through trial and error. Most of the time, you aren't going to get a right diagnose on your first time, but luckily we have the ability to go back and correct our mistakes. This ability to correct our mistakes during motor programming is called closed loop control, similar to an open loop, but has the ability to use feedback.When it comes to evaluating injuries in clinic, were are exposed to various potential injuries, with multiple special tests, and either positive or negative findings. Deciphering which tests to use for the subjective and objective findings can be hard and stressful, which is why we can correct ourselves.
The first step to information and diagnosing an injury is stimulus identification, which is similar to taking a history as well as subjective and objective findings from your patient together information about what the injury might be. Next the step is sending the movement instructions to the movement effectors, which is used to decide what special evaluation special tests need to be carried out to check the patient's injury. Being that they're are a large amount special tests to choose from, you may not pick the right one on the first try, which leads us to the next step. Once instructions are sent to movement effectors, the effectors then decide whether to carry out the instructions, add to them, or correct the instructions completely. This decisions will be based off the feedback you get from performing the special test and whether you get a positive or negative result. If you get it wrong you can the fix the error of the special test you performed or choose another special test completely.
Below is a picture of an athletic trainer performing a Lachman's test on a patient's knee. The Lachman's test is used to test for an ACL tear, which is one of the four main ligaments in the knee. Being that the AT is not sure exactly what the diagnose is, she will have to perform multiple tests until she gets a positive test. She uses the closed-loop control system to continuously use feedback to correct her errors when picking the right test before carrying out the test.

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Oh yeah? Well you tape ankles like a boy!

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Oh yeah? Well you tape ankles like a boy!

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After months of taping side by side with, and against, my female counterparts, I must say they are far better at it than I am. During are friendly " Student Tape Off" competitions, which I lost to a woman each time, I came to the conclusion that I am blaming my gender abilities and not my skill set.
An ability is something that in unchanged by practice versus a skill, which is something that can be improved with practice. When it comes to taping ankles, from the very beginning the women out shined the men is ever aspect : speed, quality, and performance. About the only thing we could beat them in was how far we could throw the tape when we lost in races.
As seen in our Purdue Peg lab, females have multiple perceptual motor abilities that enable them to perform better when to comes to fine motor tasks. One task ability they have is better finger dexterity, which allows them to have great motor and sensory control over their fingers, allowing them to tear with ease. Another aspect is that they  have better arm-hand steadiness, which is key for creating the perfect angles with your roll of tape to lay it down nice and swift to give it that smooth look. Lastly, females have improved wrist, finger speed over males due to the inherent fact that males have larger hands and slow hand motions. When it comes manipulating the tape to get it to go where you want, females use their smaller hands to become one with the tape by maneuvering it around the ankle in a way that would result in my big hands most likely knocking into the athlete's foot and  fumbling it.
Now of course practicing and facing an amateur female opponent may result in a male winning a taping race, but as seen in our athletic training cohort, the women are the supreme tapers. As seen in this video, I got beat in a race by a female AT student and I even fumbled the the tape in an effort to catch up to her. Somewhat hard to tell by the video, but my finger placement for tearing the tape is more difficult because my hands are larger and therefore my fingers take up more surface area of the tape. In contrast,my opponent had smaller hands, smaller fingers, and better control over the tape than me.

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Stay focused and alert people, this is not a drill!!

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Stay focused and alert people, this is not a drill!!

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As you can imagine, being a health care provider for one of the top college football teams in the country can be a bit overwhelming. Luckily, us athletic training students have a handbook to refer to in times of distress(no really, that handbook is our bible). It is crucial for us to be focus and react to severe situations so that our athletes can be safe and alive to be able to perform and play the sport they love.
Being a Wisconsin native, I am use to having the weather change in the blink of an eye. One minute it's sunny and the next it's raining buckets and thunder storming. There was absolutely no exception made when it came to summer practices, in which we were constantly on the look out for storm clouds and noises.  This is when our all four attentional focus quadrants were put to the test.
Our broad and external focus was demonstrated when we initially would watch the sky for any signs of a storm before and during practice. Next our broad and internal focus was put to use when we were able to analyze a flash of lightning and count how long it took to hear the thunder. Then we would begin to refer to our handbook in our head and rehearse the specific venue evacuation procedure for our athletes by using our narrow and internal focus method. Lastly, if the storm was too close for comfort, we would react and implement the designed evacuation plan for moving the equipment and athletes to shelter efficiently and swiftly.
Below is a picture of a college football that was evacuated due to thunderstorms. Being that the sports medicine staff this game was able to apply their attentional focus methods, they were able to clear out the stable in a timely manner before the storm go to close. Without our staff being proactive and paying attention, lightning could kill someone if struck and we don't want that