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The mind is a powerful thing: and many us may even take it for granted. Being a Kinesiology student and having taken 350 with Dr. Cook, mental technique coaches are now very prevalent with sports teams. Being an athlete my self, I remember thinking that mental practice (the rehearsal of a skill without the actual physical movements) was unnecessary. Every once in a while I would imagine myself swim my race. I would see my start, my strokes and my final time. Little did I know that imagery could boost my performance. Internal imagery is where you imagine yourself doing the skill where external imagery would be as if you are looking down on yourself from a bird's eye view. I distinctly remember watching the 2008 summer Olympics and Nastia Liukin looked like she was doing some type of mental imagery before her performance. Something must have worked since she won the all around gold. Studies have shown that mental practice helps acquire and maintain skills. Possible explanations for this could be an increase in cognitive strategies and the possible activation of neuromotor programs. Regardless of the what the reason why is, maybe if I start envisioning myself running a marathon; maybe it will make it easier and less painful. I decided to include a gif of Yoda because the force seems like some kind of mental power which I will try and use in my future endeavors of conquering motor skills.

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

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One thing you may not know about me is that I am pretty inpatient person. I like to get things done and don't like to waste time.  Sometimes I find myself trying to move faster than I am capable which can get me in trouble.  As I have been studying for finals and reviewing my notes, I realize that many times I have no idea what my notes say. By trying to take more and more notes and by trying to go faster, I end up abbreviating too many things and eventually have no idea what they mean. My awful notes are a great example of Fitts' speed accuracy trade off. As I try and write faster and faster, my notes are no longer as accurate and my handwriting is awful. Fitts proposed that as we try to do a skill with faster and faster speeds, we sacrifice accuracy. Unfortunately, this is a lesson I really should have learned by now. Maybe I will learn it eventually since we are always told that quality is more important over quantity. I decided to put a SpongeBob gif in because he probably accurately represents me writing and everyone loves SpongeBob

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

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If Practice makes Perfect, and no one is Perfect, then why Practice?

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If Practice makes Perfect, and no one is Perfect, then why Practice?

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Practice, Practice, Practice. It's a phrase that we have all heard before. Whether it pertains to school math problems, a sport we play, or even just changing out attitude about certain things.  One thing that always went through my mind when told to practice was, "how much is enough, or is there such a thing as too much practice?"  Well finally I think I have the answer (or at least a better answer).  It seems that distribution of practice is what matters the most.  Massed practice is when something is practiced in a short amount of time; versus distributed practice where is more rest time in between practice sessions.  Looking back at when I used to practice the piano, I had a piano teacher that told me I needed to practice 5 hours a day everyday. The Braddely study tells us that retention is actually better  when learning is spread out over time rather than massed in a few days. I now feel like I have a better excuse now when I don't want to practice something. I can use the excuse that I am performing distributed practice. I decided to include this gif from Monsters Inc. because I love how Sully practices intensely on how to scare the children.

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Disney Pixar GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

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

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Feedback is a term that we are all familiar with.  Growing up, I swam at an extremely high and competitive level until I go to college.  Throughout my time as a swimmer, I went through numerous coaches.  All had their own style and way of giving feedback. I vaguely remember learning how to swim the butterfly and I remembering my arms and legs feeling so off beat and awkward and almost like I was drowning. Back then I had no idea that this was called intrinsic feedback:feedback that is naturally available when a skill is being done.  On the other hand, I've had coaches tell me ten different things at once. This is an example of augmented feedback.  This type of feedback helps supplement the intrinsic feedback.  I've also had coaches that say almost nothing.  Being a perfectionist, I was constantly asking for feedback.  After taking this class, I have learned that too much feedback can actually be a bad thing. Little did I know that I would soon become dependent on the feedback and that could actually worsen my performance.  So now when I want to learn new things and be coached, I will be aware of how feedback is issued to me. I chose a gif of Rocky Balboa and his coach because I felt that in the movies his coach gave him lots of feedback, but it was very entertaining to the viewer

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Rocky Balboa GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

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

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This spring semester I decided to try swing dancing for the first time. With generic swing dancing, there is a basic step, a few basic turns, lots of fun spin moves, and even some flashy looking aerial moves.  As I learned the basic step and a few basic moves and kept coming back every Friday, the moves were in my declarative memory; more specifically my semantic memory. I had the general knowledge of the moves and knew what foot I should be using when and what everything should look like.  I had the knowledge of how to start specific moves and what cues to look for from my partner

After much practice with my partner, some of my favorite moves such as the pretzel, the titanic, and the fancy dip became effortless. I no longer had to think about the steps that went into making those moves work.  This is an example of how the expression of these skills became automatic.  I now knew how to perform many of the moves.

With that being said, now I find myself teaching my friends my fancy new moves.  However, since these moves are in my procedural memory and are automatic, I find it hard to choose the right words to describe the complicated movements. Doing the move with my friend who is trying to learn it or showing them with my partner is far easier than trying to explain it using my declarative memory. Please enjoy these videos of some of my favorite swing dance move!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4kFeBi6Rhc

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Uploaded by Madison Swing on 2016-08-22.