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Growing up, I wasn't necessarily the most outgoing kid. The one thing I lacked back then was a belief in what I did and it seemed the one thing I was lacking that all my fellow peers around me had was a strong passion for something in their life. Although, one day that finally changed when I was introduced to my own roots of tae-kwon-do. The thought of achieving a black belt back then meant the world for me and something that would finally give me the confidence in myself I needed as a kid. From day one I never looked back and a few years later found myself taking this picture with the one thing I wanted more than life itself. However, as you might imagine it wasn't quite that easy. There were tests of vigorous memorization as well as a multitude of physical assessments in order to determine if I was ready after each belt. This effort and practice accounted for improving and building upon techniques day after day to attain mastery of the necessary skills involved to show proficiency of each skill. This was one of the more difficult things I've had to do in my life and was an essential building block to not only my future athletic endeavors, but also provided me some of the best life lessons I've ever received.

The Fitts and Posner Motor Learning model exemplifies the process of learning these techniques perfectly. Fitts and Posner developed a 3 stage model for motor learning that characterizes the different kinds of relevant information and changes in performance of each stage. The first stage is the Cognitive stage involving mainly cognitive and verbal processes to understand how they're supposed to move to perform the skill. This was a majority of what I was doing when I was just starting and learning each of the kicks. I was learning how to do them the proper way while also consciously thinking about what I would have to do in the next moment such as following it up with a block or strike. The second stage of the model is the Associative stage which includes the refining of the movement patterns, improved consistency, and can now identify errors. As I got higher up in my belt ranks, some patterns while doing forms started to become easier to perform as I practiced more and wasn't messing up nearly as much. The last stage is the Autonomous stage where we have minimal cognitive effort, the movement is relatively automatic, and we can not only identify, but also correct errors when needed. This was the stage I was at when testing for my black belt. Everything was almost out of instinct at this point and even if I made a mistake I was quickly able to recover and even think about other things while still performing the correct movements.

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Eventually I grew out of doing tae kwon do. I was then in search of finding a sport to play in high school. Despite my development of motor skills from past experience in a lot of different sports, by no means was I considered "athletic". In my past, I had tried basketball and baseball and found out comically I was not very good at either of those. I had begged my parents for years about letting me play football and there answer had always been that I'd most likely be a speed bump if I played. However, that didn't stop me from coming out for the first day of practice. I may not have had the best abilities out of most of the people on our team but I worked extremely hard on the skills I could improve that allowed me to be a part of a varsity team that won state 3 years in a row.

The process of practicing every day helped me learn the key difference between a skill and ability and understanding how I could give myself a chance to play. Abilities are unmodifiable by practice while skills can be modified and improved by practice. For example, someone may have greater explosive strength that allows them to be stronger when running away from defenders that some of the people had a lot more of. Although, a skill I worked on a lot was my footwork to be efficient as possible at making quick cuts to avoid defenders and take the quickest paths toward open paths. I practiced this through doing ladder drills and plyometrics to better understand how to move my body which helped me improve on the field.

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"You should tryout for the powerlifting team..."

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"You should tryout for the powerlifting team..."

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Last year I came into college realizing for the first time I wasn't going to have a practice or anything to do right after my classes were done which was an odd feeling. I had always enjoyed lifting at practice so this became my hobby once I got here at UW-Madison and one day while I was lifting someone came up to me suggesting that I should tryout for the powerlifting team. It was something I had never really even considered until someone told me about it. The tryout was by no means easy but I made it and the rest was history. I'm now about to head to my second meet in hopes of going to collegiate nationals and potentially break a state squat record. This again didn't happen from day one though and there's still even times where I'm not perfect. But a vital aspect that has allowed me to get my lifts to be as efficient as possible was the process of procedural memory that's allowed me to make these movements relatively effortless and without much thought.

Procedural knowledge is the information recalled in order to do a movement like riding a bike or in this case performing the proper technique on my lifts. Reflecting on my past meet, I hit a 20 lbs personal record on squat and realized I didn't even think about what I was doing at all until after I did it. However, the following week I attempted to do the same weight and started thinking a lot about the technique I was going to need to perform the lift and I ended up failing it pretty miserably. This is an example of choking under pressure where an expert attempts to harness declarative memories in the execution of a skill that has long since been encoded in procedural form. I've done thousands of squats in my life and didn't need to change anything about what I was doing but when I tried to think consciously of something so natural it hindered my performance which is the definition of choking.

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Since I'm now always at the gym, I made the decision that I might as well get paid for doing something I loved which was physical activity. Last semester I went through a mentorship program to become a personal trainer at the university gym. Since then, I've enjoyed meeting people so many different backgrounds and attempting to improve their lives through something that's made mine so much better. Unlike this guy here who's motivating his client with ice cream, there are better and more specific methods to getting the most out of your workouts with your clients. In order to get them to understand specific movements, it requires a proper understanding of vital attributes of demonstration and verbal instruction.

One thing I like to do is give my clients verbal cues so that they can remember to pay attention to specific things in the movement so they can do them correctly. Most of them are involving an internal focus of attention which is when the learner focuses on their specific body position and movements. For example, on back exercises I like to have them thinking about squeezing a pencil in the middle of their back. This allows them to focus on engaging their back rather than pulling with their arms on something such as a row. Frame of reference is also important when teaching new movements since that will give them an idea of what they're supposed to be feeling. For example, if we're working on bench, they'll know they're working the right muscles if they're feeling their chest squeeze in and can sometimes get a feeling of a "pump" where there chest feels tight and enlarged. It's also important that I'm precise with wording so that they don't misinterpret what I'm asking them to do or still not understand if I'm being too broad with my instructions. All of these methods are important to allowing me to be the best personal trainer I can be for them and therefore, allowing them to learn and improve as well.