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In almost any sport or activity, when you do something quite wrong it's usually pretty easy to tell how you messed up the movement. However, in my experience with soccer, the intrinsic feedback that I get after I miss a shot badly is incredibly noticeable, and it usually consumes my thoughts for some time. When practicing shooting, it was always pretty easy to tell what went wrong with my shot. However, as I was learning, it was often hard for me to correct my shot with inherent feedback alone. What I remember helping me the most was augmented feedback from my coach or teammates after a bad shot. It would often take the form of "you were leaning too far back on that one" or "you need to strike the ball with your laces". I believe that shooting a ball is a perfect example of a skill where progresses can be made with inherent feedback alone, but the addition of augmented feedback allows a player to develop quicker and at a higher level. In the situation in the video below, the player probably thought about that mistake for the rest of the game. He was likely telling himself, "wow I really needed to get over that ball", and the knowledge of his performance after he saw the ball sky over the net likely stuck with him for a while and contributed to his shooting practice in the future. Additionally, his coach probably used both descriptive and prescriptive feedback. The player was likely told that he shot while leaning back (descriptive) and that in the future, he needs to make sure that his body is over the ball as he takes the shot (prescriptive). The combination of his own intrinsic feedback along with the augmented feedback from his coach hopefully helped him prevent missing howlers like this in future.

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One thing that sets top players apart from the rest is their ability to analyze many different visual cues during the game and consequently make effective decisions. The interesting thing about soccer is that it may look fairly easy when watching it on television, however when I actually play I realize how tough it is to be fully aware of all the players around you and all of the options you have, on top of trying to maintain control on the ball. What sets professional players apart is their ability to differentiate between important and unimportant visual cues in order to make the right decision. The concept that defines this process is visual search. Focusing specifically on passing (see GIF below), expert players take less time to determine what pass should be made. What they choose to focus on in real-game situations allows them to be so efficient. Specifically, a study by Williams, Davids, Burwitz, and Williams (1994) showed that expert players, while also focusing on the ball and ball handler, spent more time fixating on the positions of players and the movements that they were making. This allows them to decide which pass should be made quicker, and the result is an absolutely sublime goal in the video below.

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Penalty kicks seem easy, and its understandable. When people always see players scoring ridiculous goals, they think, "how could he not make that shot from 13 yards away?" And it's understandable, the player does indeed have the advantage, and in fact, keepers have to make the decision of which way to dive before the kick is even made. So what causes penalty kicks to be missed at the rate that they are? Well, a great portion of that answer can be found when you examine declarative vs. procedural memory. For almost all soccer players, kicking a ball is stored in our procedural memory, only absolute novices have to talk themselves through a pass or shot. Professional soccer players become successful penalty kick takers because they are able to execute the shot of their desire without thinking about it. When I look back at my experiences with penalty kicks, I remember missing plenty of them. With these misses, I can remember one specific thing: whether it was the crowd, the game situation, or even the keeper, I was distracted to the point where it was impossible for me to simply execute my shot without thinking about it. These outside influences got into my head, and instead of letting my procedural memory do the work, I overthought the situation and started to use my declarative memory to take the shot, when that movement had long ago been encoded in my procedural memory. I'm sure many professional players would tell you after a miss, "they got in my head", and we now know the performance repercussions that come with that.

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One of the hardest things to learn, in any sport, is how to effectively use your non-preferred limb. In the game of soccer, being bilaterally competent is of crucial importance. Very often, I found myself in situations where it was absolutely essential to either pass or shoot with my left foot, because trying to revert to my right foot either wasn't possible due to a defender closing in or because of the pass or shooting options available. In the video below, the player (who is right footed), does very well to beat two defenders and the goalie with pace, but finds himself in a position where he has to shoot with his left foot, and misses an open goal. At the level he is at, it's almost impossible to distinguish the preferred foot of the players because of how proficient they come to be with both feet. This is made possible, in part, due to bilateral transfer. Throughout my development at younger ages, I struggled quite a bit to be able to shoot and pass effectively with my left foot. After learning about the effects of transfer and the evidence that we have for it bilaterally, along with testing bilateral transfer in lab, I can imagine that the development that I have seen with my left foot can be attributable to the performance increases that I've seen with my right foot. Remembering way back to my grade school and middle school years, I learned the basics of shooting and passing with my right foot, naturally. I bet if I were able to find a video of me shooting or passing with my left foot at these ages, it would be pretty ugly. However, it would've been much worse had I not supplied myself with a foundation of learning these skills with my right foot. From a cognitive standpoint, I was able to refine strategies in my head that I found useful with my right foot, and then had the ability to apply these refined strategies to skills using my left foot. The bilateral transfer didn't stop in middle school, however, and as I got better and better at my abilities with my right, my left foot was almost there, taking advantage of the cognitive refinements that I was constantly making with my right foot.

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Check out this video on Streamable using your phone, tablet or desktop.

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Throughout my years as a soccer player, I experienced many changes. Whether it be transitioning from recreational play to club competition, moving positions, or moving to a different state with a noticeably different approach to the game, one thing remained constant: I absolutely loved to shoot. Whether I was playing as a striker, an outside midfielder, a winger, or a central midfielder, I always looked for situations where a shot was available. Throughout the years, I developed more effective shooting techniques for various situations, improved my power output, and honed in my accuracy. The improvements that I made would not have been possible if the concept of contextual interference wasn't inherent within my training. I was blessed to have coaches that understood what it took to produce great shooters. One of the things that these coaches had in common was their understanding of the importance of practice variability. In my opinion, what sets soccer apart from a lot of other sports is the unpredictable nature of the sport. This was applied in almost all of my shooting practice. My coaches were great in the sense that when I practiced shooting, my shots were almost always from a different spot or situation. Random practice was quite obviously preferred by my coaches. Only in a handful of practice games would I take consecutive shots from the same spot. Instead, we would often go through drills that involved, for example, a 1v1 with the keeper, followed by a set piece free kick, followed by a 3v2 situation where we would have to run if we didn't get a shot off. Another favorite of my coaches was a drill in which we went around the 18 yard box, shooting from almost every angle. Random practice within our drills dramatically improved my ability to shoot from any situation, which allowed me to pull of the goal that I scored in the video below.