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In all four years of running cross country, not once was I ever able to get rest the night before a race, even though I knew how crucial it was for preparing the muscles and brain for a physically demanding event. While I was laying there, waiting for the minutes to slowly tick by, I would think about what my coach had said helped him: visualize yourself running the entire race, visualize your strategies, and visualize yourself doing well. I would then mentally “run” through what I expected to happen the next day: Toes at the start line, heart pounding, and eyes zeroed in on the massive hill before me. The countdown begins. Then, silence. The gun fires, and a jolt runs through me as I push off the grass forcefully with my metal cleats. I sprint forward, zoning out the blur and the cheering of the crowd to either side of me. Arms pumping hard, I tackle the hill with maximum effort, and relax my muscles to let gravity pull me down the hill. Twenty minutes later, my legs are on fire, and my lungs depleted of oxygen. Finish line ahead. I explode with the last ounce of energy that I didn’t know I had, and fall forward to the finish line, trophy in hand, crowd lifting me above their heads. Okay, while visualizing the race never helped me get first place, I truly believe that the active cognitive brain rehearsal that was performed the night before may have been beneficial to my performance the next day. I used mental practice, specifically internal imagery, to experience sensations that were expected in the real situation. Coming up with a “game plan” by prepping my mindset made it so that I was more confident and ready to go for race time. It is possible that the activation of neuromuscular pathways used in running when performing mental practice contributed to an enhanced kinesthetic performance during the actual race. While support for mental practice being beneficial for well-learned skills is tentative, according to an experiment by Van Gyn, Wenger, and Gaul (1990), a bicycle sprint group that received imagery and power training showed improvement in sprint times at the end of a six week training period. This supports the idea of "mind over matter" and demonstrates the powerful interconnection between the mind and its effect on physical performance.

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The video below describes how I imagined myself running in the race the next day using mental practice and internal imagery.

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Forrest Gump Running GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

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Discover & share this Reaction GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

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A Race Against Time: The Painting Edition

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A Race Against Time: The Painting Edition

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I once had an art teacher back in high school who gave us an assignment that intended to put us in the perspective of one famous painter. This particular painter would finish his paintings in a matter of a couple hours, in order to capture the lighting and landscape of the scenery he was painting at one particular time of day. My art teacher would put up one of the artist’s paintings on the overhead, set a timer for thirty minutes, and challenge us to replicate the painting as accurately as possible. As someone who is a self-proclaimed perfectionist, (meaning I can spend about forty hours on a painting and still feel like it isn’t good enough) I had to let go of my need to be accurate and choose a speedy method of painting instead in order to fill my canvas within the thirty minute time frame. I had some questionable looking trees and flowers, but the blurriness of them added a cool abstract-effect to the painting and also made me appreciate the skill of the artist we were studying. This speed-accuracy trade-off is demonstrated by Fitts’s Law, which suggests that moving more quickly results in a less accurate execution, and vice versa.  In order to replicate the painting to the exact detail and accuracy that was presented to us, I would have had to trade-off speed and dedicate a great amount of time for that task. A similar activity that even better describes Fitts's Law would be paint-by-number, which requires painting within the lines. Implementing this often requires a steady hand and slow, careful brush strokes. If this activity was done as quickly as possible, painting within the lines would be a very difficult task.

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The video below is an accurate description of how I felt rushing to complete the painting while also attempting to be accurate. Disclaimer: my painting did not look quite as good.

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If there was a sport that could win an award for demanding the most attention, I would argue that softball would be it. As a former third baseman, my attention would be directed and divided toward many different areas on the softball field. My role was to read the catcher’s signal, prevent the runner at third base from taking off and running home, watch for a steal by the runners on first and second base, and observe the batter’s hand movement for signs of bunting, often simultaneously. If the ball was hit to me, I would guide my glove to the ball, find the position of the runners on the field in my peripheral vision, and make a decision as to where to throw the ball next, all in a matter of what felt like two seconds. While I never thought softball was too physically demanding, I always admired how much brain power and quick calculation this sport required, especially when the field is small, the bases are close, and each play happens at such a fast pace. My teammates and I would go over each scenario in our heads, sometimes communicating our plan to each other before every pitch. According to the Central Resource Theories, all stimuli compete with each other for attention. Several tasks can be performed simultaneously, as long as resource capacity limits are not exceeded. If one of the limits are exceeded, interference takes place and one will have difficulty completing one or more tasks. I specifically remember a time when the external and internal stimuli I was attempting to take in at once had exceeded capacity. I caught the ball that was hit in my direction, but because my own internal thoughts, teammates, and coach were telling me to throw the ball in various directions, I froze and I ended up not throwing the ball at all. Needless to say, I wanted to crawl into a hole that day.

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The image below is an accurate description of how my brain was feeling when my resource capacity limits were exceeded.

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Semantic memory: I began taking piano lessons when I was four years old. Back then, when I was a novice piano player, everything I learned was still stored in my semantic memory. For every note that was played, I would have to first have to figure out what letter was represented by the note on the piece in front of me, and from there I would have to find the key that corresponded to that note on the piano. This, as you can imagine, took a long time and an incredible amount of patience from my piano teacher’s end. I could use conscious attention and explain the steps needed to take to play a simple song: place your hands softly on the keys, form a “bubble” under your palms, read the note on the piece, find the corresponding key on the piano, play two A’s, two B’s, then two C’s, etc. As the years went by and I gained more experience, playing piano transitioned from a conscious to an automatic task. At the autonomous stage of learning, I could play an entire piece without putting in much thought in and without having to look at my hands. If someone today were to ask me how to play my favorite piece, I would not be able verbalize the steps out loud to them, because when I play I don’t think; I just do. Because the piece is stored in my procedural memory, I would be able to make the tapping motions of my fingers on a hard surface, but it would be very difficult for me to repeat back which cords and notes were used and steps taken.

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The video below is a good visual of how an experienced piano player might play: without looking at their hands and without cognitive awareness.

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While someone may think of ballet and softball as two completely different activities using completely different muscles, I would argue that my dance background helped me to become a better all-around athlete and softball player. Dance provided me with a foundation of strength, balance, and the ability to jump and reach far and high, all abilities used consistently in the game of softball. Especially in my early years of playing the sport, my teammate’s throws to third base were more often than not four feet above my head, or four feet to the left or right of me. Being able to leap to either side and having a high vertical jump was very useful and allowed me to catch the ball in situations where it otherwise would not have been caught. The Identical Elements Theory by Thorndike describes that positive transfer occurs where previous experiences benefit learning of a current skill. It claims that if two skills and their movement and context components are similar, then being proficient at one skill will translate to being proficient at the other skill as well. While jumping into the air on a stage, wearing point shoes, and attempting to be graceful is a different scenario than jumping into the air on a sandy, uneven field wearing heavy metal cleats, both actions required use of similar muscles, such as the glutes and quadriceps, and movement components, such as bending of the knees, pushing off the ground, and reaching with the arms. In other words, these movements have similar kinetic profiles, which is why the skills I had obtained from ballet could transfer over to enhance my learning of softball skills.

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The image below shows the similar movement components that can occur within both baseball/softball and ballet.