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Most individuals who seek out personal training are what we as trainers consider "general fitness individuals". These individuals are interested in improving their general fitness and physique as opposed to having sport specific goals. When training these individuals we generally deal with closed movements with defined beginning and ending points in the movement pattern. This is opposed to open movements that are generally associated with sport specific tasks such as kicking a soccer ball or doing rapid agility training. Based on Gentile's 2 stage model, the the second stage for open movements is diversification, learning the movement to greater extent in a way that can be applied to varying environmental circumstances. The second stage for closed movements is fixation, where the movement is learned to a greater extent focusing primarily on "fixating" on the fine tuning of the movement components. While a general fitness client would work on fine tuning their weight distribution in a squat, a sport specific client might work on the ability to have a running vertical jump in the midst of defenders on a basketball court, a changing environment.

Picture Below: The picture below is of a running vertical jump in the midst of defenders, an open movement. The picture represents a situation that could be replicated with sport specific training, where as one learns to do a running vertical jump (likely a lay up), then eventually moves into the second stage of learning and work on diversifying the movement to situations like the one shown below.

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As a trainer I use mental imagery to stimulate mental practice in every one of my clients and participants. I find that description of a movement that requires my client to mentally compare sensations and images that they associate with what I am saying, and the movement I am asking them to complete, elicits thoughtful mental practice. Cues I give such as "imagine you are popping a balloon by pressing inward with your hands" for pectoral flys, allows me to describe the movement at hand while providing relatable information. This information in turn allows the client to have a platform to start their mental practice from. This type of imagery directs clients to use internal imagery on their own, imagining him or herself inside their own body sensing and completing the task I just described (ie popping the balloon). Other imagery cues I provide such as "imagine you have a pole from your head through your back knee that is perpendicular with the floor" during lunges directs clients to use more external imagery. With this cue the client must imagine him or herself observing the movement as an observer in order to envision the "perpendicular pole" in its entirety. Imagery cues like this make up a broad portion of trainer tricks in movement instruction.

Picture Below: The picture below is a visual of a static lunge. The cue described above for the lunge describes a line from the head to the back knee that is perpendicular with the floor, as it is shown below. To envision this line, with the cue provided, one must take a mental step back and use external imagery.

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Teaching Without Doing, Learning Without Seeing

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Teaching Without Doing, Learning Without Seeing

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I have been a personal trainer and a group fitness instructor for the better part of the past 4 years. Over the course of my college career and my time as a fitness professional I have had many challenges but also many opportunities to develop transferable skill sets. One of the most influential skills I have developed is my ability to teach proper movement execution for any movement or task without necessarily having to complete it myself. Movement instruction as a trainer involves the use of both declarative and procedural memory but any fitness professional will tell you the realization that declarative instruction is much more challenging than procedural comes early. As a new trainer I had the naive belief that I had the capacity to truly instruct and define movement patterns (being that I had done them thousands of times for years prior). The challenge came when I was asked by my boss at the time to describe the movement to her as if she was blind. At that point it was evident that my procedural memory overshadowed my declarative memory for the movement at hand. While I could roughly describe the movement execution of a squat supplemented by actual demonstration, I was unable to spell out "hips move back and down as if you are sitting into a chair. Keeping the back flat, brace the core by pulling the navel back to the spine...". Over time I had the opportunity to learn the art of teaching without doing, providing explicit and concise declarative information as if someone is learning without seeing.

Picture Below: The picture below shows a barbell squat, a standard movement used by all fitness professionals as a base for other movement instruction. Breakdown of movement execution using declarative memory and instruction is essential to properly teach the movement to anyone learning a squat, even with effective demonstration from procedural memory.

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"I don't want to run, I don't want to run, I don't want to run"

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"I don't want to run, I don't want to run, I don't want to run"

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High school track and field was a love hate relationship riddled with focus on measurement of performance outcomes, latency measures specifically. The entire sport is centered around the three aspects of latency measures; what is your reaction time, what is your movement time, and put together what is your overall response time? Short distance sprinters had more fixation on reaction time than the distance athletes, and their practices reflected this. Sprinters spent a sizable portion of their time practicing starts. Each start was within milliseconds of the other and reflected the reaction time between the sound of the gun and the initial press off of the blocks by the sprinter. The best of our runners worked tirelessly on their block starts in attempt to decrease their reaction time, knowing the influence a 0.2 second faster start would have in a 10.3 second race. Although reaction time was a factor, it was not as influential in a roughly 2 minute long 800M race. I fell into the lot of distance runners as part of the 4x400 and predominantly the 4x800 relay teams and our focus was on movement time. Being that only the first of four runners had the reaction time of a gun start the coaches clocked "splits", which were the movement times of each 800M leg. Instead of blocks we huddled together at the start line prior to each hand off. We waited for the baton hand off to start the clock on our movement time, every time, without fail, thinking "I don't want to run 800M as fast as I can, I don't want to run 800M as fast as I can".

Picture Below: The picture below is of the start of a mid-long distance race. No blocks are seen in the picture which is standard, being that the importance of reaction time to the start gun is minimal in comparison to shorter distance events.

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Growing up I played percussion, an interesting endeavor starting around age 12. Never very skilled with reading musical notation I had decided that something where I essentially hit things against other things, and could consider myself a musician with, was the perfect fit. Starting with rudimentary tasks such as playing the snare drum, I began to expand the breadth of percussion instruments I had in my repertoire. Percussion generally requires two things, effective timing of contacts and a plethora of bimanual coordination. The most challenging of the percussion ensemble encountered, to me that is, was the drum set. The drum set added asymmetric bimanual coordination to the layers of complexity, making all previous practice with symmetric tasks like the snare drum obsolete, and somewhat of a hinderance. While playing "set" I would be required to keep a basic beat with my right foot on the base drum foot pedal. My left foot would be either pressing down to clasp the high hat cymbals or would be tapping to create a modified sound while the cymbals opened and closed. The asymmetric bimanual coordination extended past just two of the same limb. As my feet maintained their patterns, my hands alternated between four drums and three additional cymbals, rapping out rudiments, fills, and little drum licks. Although practice made better, the years of symmetric bimanual coordination interfered throughout my time on the set, a result of my hands and feet falling into old preferences to work together.

Picture Below: The picture below is of a baby on a drum set. Although unavoidably adorable, the image more importantly depicts the various components that make up a drum set. Each of these components is involved with the bimanual coordination of the task, and when utilized differently and simultaneously are involved in asymmetric bimanual coordination.