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I have found myself compromising the accuracy of my reach for speed when I am rushing to grab my phone. 

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I have found myself compromising the accuracy of my reach for speed when I am rushing to grab my phone. 

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My performance as a player only increased as I developed my attentional focus and visual search skills while out on the field. 

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My performance as a player only increased as I developed my attentional focus and visual search skills while out on the field. 

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There are many components to our visual attention, there are even many ways that we use visual information subconsciously (Sensory: Vision, slide 8). For over ten years of my life I practiced and played soccer. I was a beginner for awhile, but by high school I wasn’t too bad (no expert that’s for sure).  One reason that I loved soccer so much was the strategy; I learned to play more consistently and effectively as I continuously modified my attentional focus. As we learned in class the eye is both a sensor and an effector (Sensory: Vision, slide 3); it can tell us about the environment and where we are in it (Sensory Vision, slide 2). Visual sensation, attention, and feedback were all crucial to my ability to play in a game and my adapted visual search is what helped me to improve over the years.

I know that when I first started kicking a soccer ball around, I did not have a keen sense of where my plant foot was landing next to the ball or where the other pre-k children were running around the tiny field. I, like many beginners, did not know where to focus my attention. Because of that there was no strategy for processing helpful incoming information. We use our eyes as sensors so that we can make successful movement based on the information from our vision (Sensory: Vision, slide 2). I was focused on very specific and safe things as a beginner - the ball and the goal. As we discussed in class, the attentional focus of someone who is novice is often much different than that of an expert (Sensory: Vision, slide 28). With more experience I started to focus on the most helpful information to execute an effective response. For an example, while playing defense when I was younger I would fixate my eyes on the ball as if I could know exactly where it was going to go. As I got older however I learned to watch the hips of the attacker rather than the ball or their feet. This is an example of the development of my visual search. In the literature visual search is defined as the “process of directing visual attention to locate relevant environmental cues” (Sensory: Vision, slide 25). Another way visual search changed for me over the years of playing soccer was that I became more aware of the whole field during a game. Rather than watching my feet I would look up to see where a teammate might be running or where there would be a gap in defense. Sometimes I would not even look to where a teammate was I would just kick towards them because I had picked up on the direction they were moving. The movement filter is an important visual cue selection tool, especially in soccer by drawing our visual attention to the things, in this case people, who are moving in our environment.

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I needed the push from my PT to accept that distributed practice would be better in the long run for my recovery and future performances. 

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I needed the push from my PT to accept that distributed practice would be better in the long run for my recovery and future performances. 

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I tore both of my ACLs and each time if I had been my own PT I would have crammed all the skills I needed to work on into the first week post-op. It was my physical therapist who slowed me down and knew the value of practicing each skill for a short time and then coming back to it next week. In other words, while relearning motor skills during my knee rehab, I followed a distributed practice schedule rather than a massed one. A distributed schedule refers to practice with extended breaks in between trials of a skill; on the other hand, a massed practice schedule includes short breaks between repeated trials of a skill (Practice Distribution module, page 2).  I think that the research on distributed practice is even more applicable to injuries. I understand that with an injury there is also the physical repair and tissue rebuilding that needs to happen. But even so, relearning balance or a walking gait after surgery felt similar to learning a completely new task.

I specifically think my knee rehab reflects the concepts of practice distribution for a couple reasons. For one, I needed to distribute the time of my PT sessions over many weeks due to the physical recovery and healing. But in addition, the way that my PT had me practice skills within and between sessions also replicated a distributed practice style. And for that I am grateful. Literature from class proved that distribution of practice is not just an influencer on performance but that it is a “learning variable” as well (Practice Distribution module, page 4). To sum it up, “learning is better if it is spread out over days than if it is spread out over intervals within a few days” (Practice Distribution module, page 3). My PT did not have me practice repeatedly one task or skill for each session. Rather we would start with stretching, work on balance, work on gait, ice and repeat the next time. While this is somewhat getting into the idea of practice variability, the point was, my PT wanted me to learn and master the balance activity AND the gait adjustments. So neither of those tasks were practiced in a massed distribution. Rather for much of my postop PT I repeated the same skills, tasks, and challenges as I slowly got better at the skill. Research would suggest not only did I learn better the knowledge gained with distributed practice is more likely to lead to quicker improvements and better retention  because lack of repetitive fatigue (Bourne and Archer, 1955). I am grateful that my PT pushed me to accept a slower and longer practice distribution. Since I knew recovery was going to take awhile the longer length of a distributed practice schedule did not matter. Now I can confidently say I learned much more in the two months of PT than what I would have learned in a week immediately post-op!

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The only way it is possible for me to go upside down during my yoga practice is through the proprioceptors in my body. 

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The only way it is possible for me to go upside down during my yoga practice is through the proprioceptors in my body. 

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As a practicing PT I will need to know how classify motor behavior but even more than that I will need to be able to evaluate and apply that knowledge in a systematic way. 

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As a practicing PT I will need to know how classify motor behavior but even more than that I will need to be able to evaluate and apply that knowledge in a systematic way. 

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Someday I will be a PT treating my own patients! My goal will be to increase motor performance and sometimes challenge them with motor learning. This could be after a orthopedic trauma, a surgery, or just a side-effect of old age. I will need to be able to evaluate my patient’s movements in detailed and accurate ways. There are many types of classification of motor skills and movements that have been created over the years. The one that sticks out the most to me is Gentile’s Two-Dimensional Taxonomy in which motor skill classification is back on the mechanism of the action, or the internal function, as well as the context of the environment (Classification Lecture, slide 26). This specific classification systems divides motor skills into 16 potential categories. I think Gentile’s taxonomy is related to my future career, and I like it so much because, it does not just isolate the individual. In the world of physical therapy the goals of the patients are typically not going to be the ability to stand around and isolate the movement of their leg a certain way. The goals will be more like: more balance in order to keep their dog at home, practice and strength walking up stairs so they can leave the hospital and go home, or getting back some cardiorespiratory fitness to keep up with the grandkids. The context of the environment is crucial to the performance and execution of the task and I love that Gentile included this.

What is also nice about Gentile’s taxonomy is that is so simple that classification via the 16 categories allows for a standardized system. And in addition to categorizing known skills Gentile’s taxonomy is organized in a way to allow for progression of motor performance on a task by subtly manipulating the variables of the environment or the mechanisms of the task (Classification lecture, slide 31). This means the taxonomy is even more applicable to rehab-type setting when development of motor skills is a big focus of continued practice.

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I have specific motor habits when I am in a rush. It usually includes trying to hop quickly into clothes or swiftly knock my phone off the table while trying to reach for it too quickly. Both of these are, albeit somewhat atypical, examples of Fitt’s Law. Fitt observed and later quantified the trade-off that we must face between speed and accuracy. For me this comes out in my clumsiness with the little things. If I were to slow down in the morning my leg would make it into the hole of my jeans without a problem and I would not be sent hopping across the floor in attempt to regain balance and put my foot on the floor. In the same way, if accuracy was important, I would have to be slower about reaching for and picking up my phone. Fitt’s Law is ultimately the phenomenon that in our motor movements we experience “accuracy decreased with increase motor speed” (Fitts Law, slide 5). For me this happens in little ways every day.
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I love yoga because it is one of the most relaxing things I do. I have found however that yoga does not relax me into naïve bliss; instead it wakes up my senses and challenges me to be acutely aware of my body, even more so than before. This is because yoga highly activates the proprioceptors all over my body.

Proprioceptors are one of the two types of Somesthesis, they are officially defined as “specialized mechanoreceptors providing uninterrupted knowledge about general position of the body in space prior to and during movements” (Sensory: Proprioception, slide 4). During yoga you are often challenged to stretch your muscles, the feeling of muscle tension that happens before stretching is because of Golgi tendon organs, a type of proprioceptors. When you flow through a sun salutation your joint receptors help indicate when you are standing, bending your knees, or extending them straight behind you. And during all of the positions the muscle spindle proprioceptors are activated indicating stretching and changes in position (Sensory: Proprioception, slide 4). I think that like training a muscle to be stronger, we can ‘train’ ourselves to be more aware of the proprioceptors in our bodies. In fact, just like learning a novel skill, proprioceptors provide me with feedback during my yoga practice that help me to improve. Trying a new pose or balance posture will challenge me to listen to proprioceptors that weren’t firing before. In this way the proprioception sense helps not only during yoga but also aids in the further progress of my yoga skills.