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Definitions were obtained from Dr. Mason's lecture slides on canvas, 2018

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While all of my coaches encourages mental practice in my basketball career, my Junior Varsity coach emphasized it much more than any other coach. At every practice the night before a game she would take the last ten minutes to have us sit and think through all of the plays we ran. Along with this, she told us that when we were laying in bed the night before a game, she expected us to run through all of our plays and all of the options to them. Mental practice is the active cognitive rehearsal of a physical skill in the absence of overt physical movements. It is important to differentiate mental practice from meditation and day-dreaming. While she likely did not know the name of the type of mental practice she was explaining, she emphasized imagining actually performing the plays. This type of mental practice is internal imagery. Internal imagery is when a person imagines being inside his or her own body while performing a skill and experiencing the sensations that are expected in the actual situation. So, in this case, when mental practice was encourages, I practiced the plays through my own eyes. I did not know this at the time, but I am better at internal imagery than external imagery. I learned that it was easier for me to complete internal imagery in lecture when we filled out the worksheet that had us score the difficulty of imagining given scenarios. In high school, I found mental practice especially helpful when trying to rehearse what to do based on the defenders reaction. In practice, it is nearly impossible to physically run through every possible way a defender would react, so running through all of the plays mentally helped me feel confident that no matter what the defender chose to do, I would know which version of the play to complete.

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During high school, I was a middle hitter in volleyball. Which was a good fit for me because I was awful at passing. Hitting consists of different components. Arm swing, foot work, jumping and placement of hand on the ball all going into hitting. One way my coach had us improve our arm swing and hand placement was by eliminating the foot work and jumping components. To do this we stood on a box that was just tall enough to have our hand extent over the net. Then, our coach would toss the ball up to us, which also minimized the variability that a setter would produce. Doing this is an example of transfer of learning. Transfer of learning is the gain (or loss) in proficiency of one skill as the result of practice on some other skill. More specifically, this is an example of positive transfer. Positive transfer is the beneficial effect of previous experience (or transfer task) on learning or performance of another skill. So, in this case, practicing just the swinging motion and hand placement improved our overall performance of the entire hitting task. This improvement can be explained by two theories of positive transfer. One of these theories is the identical elements theory (Thorndyke,1914). This theory states that two tasks that share a greater number of elements are expected to transfer more than two tasks that don not share as many elements. Hitting from the box and normal hitting share the same arm movement, hand placement, and timing of the swing as actual hitting. Therefore, it is not surprising that improving those elements would result in a better normal hit. Along with the identical elements theory, elaborated automatisms (Bernstein, 1996) can help explain the positive transfer that occurred. Automatisms are background corrections that we make during the performance of skills to coordinate the forces that we use during a given performance. Since the same forces are used in the two tasks (because they both involve hitting the volleyball), it would make sense to apply this idea to the positive transfer that was observed.

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The summer going into my freshman year of high school, I practiced shooting my bow for over an hour everyday in my backyard. I was practicing for the fall. That year I had a bear tag so my end goal was to be able to shoot a bear while sitting in a tree stand. Now that I understand the types of practice, I realize that I used some random practice. Random practice includes a routine that is modified. In random practice there is higher contextual interference. What I did that made my practice random was move the distance that I practiced at. I would shoot three arrow at the target from 15 yards, then shoot three at 25, then move back to 20. I didn't do this in any certain order, I would just change the distance randomly. While I didn't know this a the time, doing random practice increased my retention. Another variable I was able to change at an archery range was the height that I shot from. One range I went to had a three-tier tower. This tower was used to help practice what shooting out of a tree would be like. In order to use random practice in this situation, I would change which level of the tower I shot at for each set I completed. Overall, my method of practice worked because I was able to shoot a bear that fall.

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One of my favorite parts of high school basketball was helping with the youth camps we held. Young girls who played for Kaukauna Girls Basketball Association (KGBA), and even kids too young to be on a team, could sign up for a three week summer school basketball camp. This camp was run by our varsity coach, but we were encouraged to come and help whenever we could. I loved the idea of being able to use the skills I worked so hard for to help younger girls develop their skills and love for the game. It was very rewarding to watch the players improve through the camp. After taking Kines 361, I now understand the processes that are involved in teaching a skill. In order to teach a skill, information must be retained in a certain way for future use. Memory storing is constructed by three components with different functions. One of these components is encoding. Encoding is registering info from the environment. The next component is storage, which is the capacity to retain encoded information. The final components is retrieval, which is the ability to locate and recall stored information. In order to help teach the girls how to practice drills or tasks, I had to store the memories of all of the skills I had learned throughout my basketball career. These memories were broken down into two categories, procedural and declarative. Procedural memory is the "ability to do" memory. This memory is unconscious, automatic memory that consists of cognitive, perceptual and motor components. This memory, in my case, allows me to know the processes that make up the skills I am trying to teach. Declarative memory is the "what to do" memory. It is conscious memory that enables me to verbally communicate and explain what needs to be done. Declarative memory includes semantic memory, which includes general knowledge about the world, and episodic memory, which is about specific events such as my first basketball game or first free-throw. If I were to teach these kids skills again, I would take a different approach. I would use my knowledge about memory to determine the best method to teach them. My procedural memory allowed me to complete the task I was trying to teach them, but it did not help me verbally explain it. In order to explain the skill to the girls I had to use declarative memory. Declarative memory allowed me to explain facts about the skill we were working on.

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When I was in 5th grade I started playing basketball. I hated it. I could not dribble to save my life, let alone even catch the ball sometimes, and don't even get me started on boxing out and rebounding. I met all of my friends through basketball so I stuck it out and played 5th and 6th grade. When 7th grade rolled around I decided I had had enough. I was still not very good and everything was becoming way too political. So, despite my friends best efforts I did not play that year. Then during that year I sprouted from your average 7th grade girl's height of 5'3"-5'4", to a not-so-average 5'10". All of this growing happened within a year. Suddenly, all of my previous coaches were much more interested in developing me as a player. Little did I know, re-joining basketball would be one of the best choices I ever made. Not-surprisingly, I was still awful. This time I was determined to be good. Thinking back to how I grew as a player, I realize now that I used Fitts and Posner's 3-stages of motor learning. In the beginning of my 8th grade season I made vast improvements in my dribbling. This fast improvement can be explained by the cognitive stage of motor-learning. One thing I was not consistent on is free-throws. During some practices I could shoot 8 or 9 out of 10 and then the next practice I would make 4. I remember being incredibly frustrated, but now I realize this inconsistency can be explained by the cognitive stage of motor learning. I realize that instead of my actions being natural and unconscious, I thought through everything I was doing. I thoroughly planned my actions of my free-throw, from the placement of my feet, to the angle of my elbow, I made sure everything was correct before finally taking the shot. Eventually I entered the associative stage. I noticed that I developed a pattern for free-throws. I didn't think about my foot placement or the angle of my elbow anymore because I knew when it felt right. Along with this, I could often tell when I was going miss as soon as the ball left my hand. my average in games was also fairly consistent at 70% and slowly moved up to 80% by the end of the season. By the beginning of my freshman year season, I no longer had to think during my free-throws. I had a routine that I did every time without thinking. I wouldn't be distracted by the other people around me during practice or a game. Along with this, when I would miss, say to the left, I knew what slight adjustment I needed to make to make the next shot.