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This is high school me using my knowledge of the BEEF method to shoot the basketball in a game. 

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I've played basketball my whole life. My dad is a great high school basketball coach so I spent many hours in the gym over the years. He taught me everything I know about basketball. One of the most important aspects of being a good basketball player is being able to shoot the ball with good form. The way I was taught, and how I now teach new learners at basketball camps is with the acronym BEEF. BEEF stands for balance, eyes, elbow in, and follow-through. When learning to shoot a basketball it is important to have good balance, eyes to the target, elbow "tucked in", and dominant hand follow-through toward the basket. BEEF is an effective shooting method for young players because it doesn't overwhelm them with details before they've mastered the basics.

Talking yourself through the steps of BEEF while shooting is a good example of the Cognitive Stage in Fitts and Posner's Three-Stage Model of motor learning. Once you start to get the hang of how BEEF sets up your shot, you move into the Associative Stage. Here you make small adjustments to what is most comfortable and effective for your shot. You are also able to start detecting some of your errors. With lots of practice, you then may be able to go into the Autonomous Stage. Since I have been practicing shooting a basketball for most of my life, I believe this is the stage I am in. Shooting has become almost automatic for me and I am able to shoot well even with a lot of environmental changes around me.

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This is me finally getting up on the wakeboard for the first time. I was so excited!

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Last summer one of my friends asked me if I wanted to go wakeboarding at their cabin and although I had never done it before, of course I said yes. He warned me that getting up on the wakeboard and staying up is pretty difficult and tiring and that only a few people have gotten up with him. Even with all that I still thought, "how hard could it really be?" Growing up I was an expert at Ripsticking. A Ripstick is sort of like a skateboard but it only has two wheels instead of four. I have also waterskied a few times and have been downhill skiing a bunch. I was hoping that those experiences  would help me on the wakeboard and they definitely did. After a few tries of being thrown into the water, I finally got up and I was so excited.

This is an example of the Transfer of Learning concept we learned about in 361. Specifically, I experienced positive transfer as my previous experiences were beneficial to learning this new skill.

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I also ran cross country and track in high school. I had the same great coach for both. We called her Momma T. While coaching us she used various different augmented feedback methods. Momma T always knew what to say and when to say it so that her feedback would be helpful. She used the Verbal KP method well. During a practice rep, she might yell "arms!" or "knees!" to tell us to fix our running form or she might yell "let the horses run" which was our little inside joke to tell us to run free and loose. These sayings are considered Descriptive KP feedback. Because we were experienced runners and knew her coaching style, all she needed to say was what we were doing right/wrong for us to correct our running form. Between reps she would give us feedback on what looked good and what we should fix for next time. She used a bit of Descriptive KP and Prescriptive KP. Prescriptive KP is used to tell what do to do fix the movement. She would breakdown our form verbally and tell us how to fix it and what we should look like to be more efficient.

She also used the Video KP method where she would record us running and then have us watch it back to analyze and make notes of our running form so that we could improve it during our next rep or run. This was very helpful for me to see what things I could change to run more efficiently.

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This is me "reading the defense" and making a move to get to the basket to score. 

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During basketball practices we would spend a lot of time doing shooting drills because being able to score in games is very important to be a good basketball team. At the beginning of practices my coach would start by having us shoot 10 shots from several different locations on the floor (10 block shots, 10 corner shots, 10 shots in the middle the lane, etc.) This is an example of block practice. He used to mostly for us to get warmed up and to get lots of repetitions in. Then, later in practice, we would do a different shooting drill that used random practice by passing us the basketball at different locations on the court and having us be ready to shoot right away (free-throw, jump-shot, three pointer, layup, etc). Throughout our practices, the drills we did increased in difficulty as we went on. We always started with something easy and blocked to get us warmed up, and then later in practices drills would get more difficult and more game-like. Switching between methods was a good practice design for us to get a lot out of the time. Random practice is especially important to get really good at a skill. It requires constant attention to be able to recreate movements effectively and efficiently. Random practice for basketball shooting allowed us to be more game ready. We were used to having to constantly be ready for different types of passes and were able to make the correct moves based on the defense or environment around us.