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As an athletic training student, one of the essential skills we need to know is how to tape ankles. It’s important because all UW football players are required to have their ankles taped or use an ankle brace for every practice or game. With over a hundred athletes on the team, the athletic training staff tapes roughly 120 ankles per practice. Athletes are very particular about their tape jobs because rolls in the pre-wrap or gaps in the tape can cause blisters or instability in the ankle, which could ultimately lead to a sprained ankle. Because this is a skill that’s used most days out of the week, instructors begin to teach it to us freshman year before we are even in the program. An ankle tape job consists of several steps, which include: sticky spray, heel and lace pads, circulars, two heel locks, three stirrups, 2 horseshoes, and closing circulars. This process is the same on almost all ankles, and the best way to practice it is by repeating it over and over on an ankle. Because I have been practicing and putting this technique into use for three years now, taping ankles has become automatic. However, it is very hard to explain in words to other people how to tape an ankle because it is stored in my procedural memory. Procedural memory is our unconscious knowledge and our ability to “do it.” It deals with “how to” perform various skills instead of “knowing about” the skills. Therefore, when taping ankles I am using my procedural memory to complete the nearly automatic task I have spent several years learning.

The gif below represents the speed of ankle taping when the skill becomes automatic.

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As an athletic trainer, a lot of your time is spent observing practice and watching for injuries. We are often assigned to a position group and follow them around practice with water and supplies in case they get hurt. Because of this, I have become aware of some of the coaching strategies. For example, the linebacker coaches often have the players practice blocking techniques against the blocking sleds. This is helpful because it reduces the need of extra players to practice blocking against, as well as reduces the risk of injury for those players. This coaching technique is beneficial because it applies to the positive transfer theory. One theory of positive transfer is called the Identical Elements Theory. This theory explains that two tasks that share a larger number of similar elements are expected to show higher transfer than two tasks that share fewer common elements. Many of the elements used with a blocking sled, such as hand placement, footwork, and power, are also used when blocking a real player. Therefore, because they share so many common elements, they often show high positive transfer when blocking against a real offensive player, and coaches often use this strategy during practice.

The picture below shows an athlete using blocking sleds during a drill in practice.

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Often times following a football game, the athletic training room is very busy and filled with athletes. Whether the athlete is sore from the game, rolled his ankle while running a route, or is following up with a long-term rehab, he will come to the athletic training room early Sunday morning to check in with an athletic trainer. Quite often it is common to be approached by one athlete who is dealing with soreness from a strained hamstring, another who is progressing through a long-term ACL rehab, and another who severely injured his wrist during the game. One of the important skills the athletic trainer must have is the ability to handle what may seem like chaos and provide adequate care to all of the athletes. This relates to Theories of Attention, because it states that our attention is fixed and has a limited capacity. Often times, when the ATR is busy it requires a lot of “multi-tasking” which may mean our care is compromised for each individual athlete due to the presence of several stimuli. Additionally, because it says our attention capacity is limited, I may have to choose to focus on one athlete and set up his treatment and plan before helping another athlete go through a rehab. This relates to the Bottleneck Theory of Attention because I may have to work with one athlete before moving on and focusing on another.

This picture below displays what a busy athletic training room may look like on a Sunday after game day.

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Another aspect of practice is the team portion. This is when the offense starters practice against the defense starters. During this time, the offense practices calling plays so the defense can practice blocking them. However, during this time it is important to note that the offense does not run the same play multiple times in a row, but instead goes through them in a random order. This is important for the defense because they are undergoing random practice. The reconstruction hypothesis states “high amounts of contextual interference benefit learning because the interference requires the person to more actively reconstruct an action plan on the next practice trial for a skill.” Therefore because the offense is running different plays each time, it creates high contextual interference and requires the defense to rethink a plan to stop the play each time. This will benefit their learning and therefore increase their performance during a game when the other team is carrying out the plays in a random order.

The picture below is what the typical team practice looks like when the offensive practices running plays against the defense.

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One of the aspects that comes along with athletic training is seeing a lot of injured athletes. Understandably so, many athletes are upset about their injury because it means they can’t practice or play in games. Often times, they think if they are hurt and unable to practice, they are unable to get better at their game. Although it is true that their improvement may be limited, as athletic trainers we have athletes make use of mental practice so that athletes can still be getting better. Research shows that even 100% mental practice shows improvement in learning new skills. Therefore, if an athlete needs to learn new routes for the upcoming game but is unable to run them during practice because he is injured, the use of mental practice would be beneficial. The athlete can make use of external imagery, or imagining viewing himself from the perspective of an observer. This could mean an athlete imagines watching himself run a route from the perspective of a coach. Additionally, he could also try internal imagery by imagining running the route and feeling all the associated sensations. Overall, an injured athlete is often recommended to use mental practice to improve or learn new skills why unable to physically practice.

The image below is an example of routes an injured player could use mental practice to help learn.