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Performance early on is a poor predictor of future skill performance

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Performance early on is a poor predictor of future skill performance

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As I entered my senior year of high school, one question which was always asked by underclassman learning to pole vault and that was if pole vaulting came naturally to me? Sadly, pole vaulting has been the only sport I have participated in that didn't come very quickly to me. If you watched my first day of pole vaulting, you would have never believed that I would become as skilled as I did at the sport. To keep things short and simple, I was far from professional at pole vaulting. I wasn't able to clear 6' (normally two feet below the starting height for JV meets) which was very frustrating to me during my first month of practice.

After taking Kines 361, I learned that my first practice was a poor predictor of my future success at the skill. Particularly, Ackerman's Integrated Model explains that the abilities to perform a skill change throughout the learning process. During the cognitive stage of learning how to pole vault, I was determining which strategies were best while discarding less useful strategies and as a result, I was not as consistent during my run leading up to the vault as I would become. Next was the associative stage when I developed my movement consistency and got better at being able to detect individual mistakes all while slowly improving at the skill. I still needed to consciously think about which motor skills I needed to perform in order to complete a successful vault during this stage, but as I transitioned to the third stage of learning, the autonomous stage, that was noticeably changed. I no longer had to consciously think about the several aspects of pole vaulting while I was approaching the pit as I previously had. Some aspects that I no longer had to think about were keeping my shoulders square, allowing my shoulders to "bounce" as I was running with the pole, focusing on planting the pole with my arms fully extended while simultaneously pushing upward and jumping prior to "swinging" my body up, etc.

I've chosen this gif because it represents my level of skill with pole vault prior to entering the autonomous stage.

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As I became better at pole vaulting, I began to fill into a teaching role for new incoming pole vaulters. As I would try to explain a component(s) of the vaulting process, I remember that when I wanted to explain an aspect of pole vaulting to a new vaulter, I was unable to put my thoughts into words. I would find myself saying something along the lines of "okay, while you plant the pole in the box you should also be pushing up while jumping and swinging before getting vertical and then you slightly push off the pole when you're upside down, so in essence, you just do it" which is needless to say pretty confusing right?

This inability to put the required actions into words was due to the concept known as procedural memory or the inability to put a concept into understandable sentences when attempting to teach an individual a skill. I have attached a gif of Ron Burgundy to depict what the younger pole vaulters were most likely thinking whenever I tried to explain how to perform a component of a vault

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As I mentioned previously, when I first starting pole vaulting, I was not necessarily a star pupil. For every pole vault pit, there is a small area between the foam pit and metal "box" which can be problematic during the early stages of learning pole vault. As I was approaching the mats during one vault, I realized I was approaching the mats at an extremely fast pace. During the final steps of the run up to the vault, I needed to plant the pole in the metal pit by moving my arms faster in a shorter amount of time than what I should have done.

As a vaulter approaches the mats, they must maintain an adequate speed while simultaneously slowly lowering the pole in order to increase their planting accuracy. This slow lowering of the pole allows the vaulter to be more accurate in planting the pole into the metal pit. When the pole is quickly lowered, commonly during the final steps of the run up to the vault, the vaulter is less accurate in planting the pole into the metal pit. This is a depiction of Fitts' law of speed versus accuracy trade-off which states as the speed during a motor task increases, our accuracy in performing the task decreases as a result. Below I have attached a gif of an unfortunate pole vaulter that did not understand Fitts' law very well and attempted to plant the pole too quickly and was not accurate in doing so.

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You Gotta Know When to Let Go... of the Pole

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You Gotta Know When to Let Go... of the Pole

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When people watch pole vaulting, one of the first questions that come to mind is how do pole vaulters know when and how to contort their bodies in order to clear the height bar. Pole vaulters are able to determine the most favorable point to extend their bodies and twist over the height bar by utilizing one of our Kines 361 topics known as proprioception. By using the visual system, a pole vaulter can determine where they are located in space and as a result, know which portion of the vault they are in. For example, after the swing phase has occurred and a pole vaulter is able to see their feet, the pole vaulter knows that it is time to begin the twist phase of the vault as the pole begins to release its newly stored potential energy.

Without proprioception, pole vaulting would nearly be an impossible task to perform due to the perceptual knowledge of body location throughout the vaulting process. I have attached a first-person view of pole vaulting, via a gif, so it is easier to understand why proprioception would be necessary in order to clear a height bar in pole vault.

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First Person Perspective Pole Vaulting. Tagged with mindwarp, awesome, pole vaulting, go pro, jumping, perspective

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"If You Want to Get Better, You Should..."

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"If You Want to Get Better, You Should..."

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Pole vaulting, in terms of the motor skills and cognitive aspects, is unquestionably one of the most challenging sports in existence. Hence, without the understanding of how and when to perform certain aspects of the vault, it would be nearly impossible to get better at the skill. I was lucky enough to have a coach who was able to provide me with both visual and auditory feedback in order to help me succeed at the sport by knowing how to make corrections for my movements. For example, whenever a pole vaulter "flags" out or goes sideways at the top of the pole in order to clear a height, this is primarily due to the vaulter not swinging their jump leg fast enough. My coach would record videos of individual vaults and talk to me one-on-one while verbally explaining how I should swing my plant leg faster and stronger before twisting in order to avoid "flagging" as I would attempt to clear the height bar. After a fair amount of practice, I was able to correct my motor movements and clear the height without flagging over thanks to this new knowledge of my incorrect form.

This is an example of the concept known as augmented feedback because an external source, my coach, was providing me information that I would not have been able to gain from the task without having prior knowledge. I have attached a gif of a coach instructing his team similarly to how I was being instructed by my coach when I was learning how to pole vault.