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Any athlete that has worked diligently at the learning and performance of a certain set of skills can attest to the third stage of learning. Being in the zone, or clinically referred to as the autonomous stage is the highest level of learning. Skills that have reached this level require reduced attention demands. In the autonomous stage the skill has become largely automatic and there is less interference from simultaneous activities. The hard work that I had put into motor learning went a long way during the freshman winter basketball classic. In this tournament I was referred to as Mr. Automatic and helped to will my team to the championship game. In the picture on the left you can see a freshman year Andrew wearing a number 23 jersey. You may immediately notice the brace on my hand. A couple weeks prior to the tournament I had dislocated my thumb but was determined to play as the team needed my services as the starting point guard. What you may not notice is that one of my shoes has tape on it. Right before the end of halftime an opponent stepped on my shoe while i was running down the court and the sole of my shoe partially flapped from the rest of the shoe. As i did not have a pair of back up shoes, my quickest fix was to tape the sole back to the rest of my shoe and continue with gameplay. As my dribbling, shooting and passing skills were largely automatic at this point, it let me divert my attention to making sure that I did not re-injure my thumb. Also some of my attention went to making sure that I adjusted my movements so that the loss of grip on one of my shoes due to the athletic tape did not knock me off my balance. Did I fell to mention that we won?

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Though my success with basketball was very prominent in my early years, by my senior year of high school it became time to let basketball go. There became a point where the time that I had to devote to basketball was not large enough to keep up with the improvement that my piers were having in their skill sets. As the law of practice states, skill improvements became smaller as practice continues. In addition, the learning curve for complex task represents an S-shaped curve meaning that learning and improvement in complex tasks are slower at the beginning and end of the learning process. At the end of my junior year I had to analyze my basketball career and make a decision on whether to continue with basketball and play varsity my senior year. Due to a scheduling change, I had to decide whether or not I would play my last year in highschool and give my academics a backseat, as Calculus 2 was being offered during the same period as basketball practice, or to continue playing the sport I had devoted so much time to for so long. I observed that not only had I not received any offers from colleges yet, I also was not seeing big improvements in my game. I came to the conclusion that it would be better to take the year off and focus on academics. All worked out in the end, as in December of my senior year of high school I was offered the Posse scholarship which guaranteed me free tuition for 4 years at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

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Growing up 13 months younger than my oldest sister I was forced to participate in some of the activities that she did. Doing so made it convenient for our parents to pick us up from the same location at the same time. Being the middle child did not come with many perks. My older sister got to decide what activity she wanted to do and I was forced to tag along. I hardly liked gymnastics, and never saw much of a future in it. I also hated the fact that I was often times the only boy at the practices. It took me quite some time to become fully engage in the practice sessions. During the first few weeks I would avoid drills and give a half-hearted effort when called upon to participate. However, throughout the dissatisfaction I was unaware how my time in gymnastics would benefit me in the near future.
My time in gymnastics resulted in easier coordination of my limb movements when I decided to play a new sport called basketball. Performing tasks like shuffling my feet to play defense and executing the footwork to perform a layup came easy to me because I had performed similar foot movements on the floor mat in gymnastics. This beneficial effect of previous experience on performance of another skill is referred to in motor learning as positive transfer. This gave me a competitive advantage over my piers who were also starting to learn the game of basketball.

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Though I had not played organized basketball before, I grew up in a basketball loving household in the greater Los Angeles area. I had the privilege growing up to watch and study the game of one of the all time greatest players, Kobe Bryant. Every time the Lakers game was televised, the game was guaranteed to be on the TV in the living room. This historic team that was on the verge of being back-to-back-to-back champions in the year 2002, and featured the superpowers of Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant meant guaranteed television coverage 95% of the time they played. As I watched the games constantly and dissected Kobe's movements, I would recall the visual in my head and try to remember how Kobe did it as I tried to perform the skill myself. I also tried to mimic his decision making and make the play that Kobe would make if he was in my situation on the court. This lead coaches to tell me that I had a high basketball IQ. Defined as a player who constantly made good decisions and the right play at the right time. Not only was I smart on the court, I was smart off the court too.
In elementary school, my reading and math scores ranked in the 90th percentile of kids my age in the Long Beach Unified School District. This high level of intelligence propelled me in the Cognitive stage of learning. The Cognitive Stage of learning is the first stage of learning defined by Fitts & Posner's 3-Stage Model. They note that in this stage that performances are highly based on cognitive process, and in this stage gains are dramatic and large. This ideology is further supported by Ackermans Integrated Model. His studies proved that general intellectual ability correlated with higher performance in the first stage of learning. These motor learning foundations held true as I was quick to pick up the foundation of new skills I was taught.

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Kobe Bryant's Top 10 Plays of 2000-2001 NBA Season

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Check out Kobe Bryant's Top 10 Plays of 2000-2001 NBA Season!! About the NBA: The NBA is the premier professional basketball league in the United States and Canada. The league is truly global, with games and programming in 215 countries and territories in 47 languages, as well as rosters that currently feature 85 international players from 36 countries and territories.

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As I began to progress through my basketball career it wasn't enough to be able to perform a skill with just your dominant limb. It was important to be able to perform a layup with either hand and to be able to dribble with both hands. The position that I began to fall in love with was point guard. Having to bring the ball up the court and facilitate the offense meant that you had to have the strongest dribbling skills out of all of your teammates. As I got older defenders began to pick up on the fact that I favored my right hand and began to force me to use my left hand. As they did this it caused me to fumble the ball often which lead to turnovers or easy points for the other team. Thankfully it didn't take as long for me to develop my left hand as it did for me to develop my right hand. When learning to dribble with my right hand it took me a couple of days before I was able to easily control the ball while making simple movements. Yet, by the end of my first time practicing solely with my left hand I was able to easily navigate the court using my left hand. This efficient motor learning is due to bilateral transfer and the development of schemas. Prior development of rules governing the dribbling motion led me to skip the first stage of learning when performing the task with my left hand. Being that bilateral transfer is the transfer of performance from one side of the body to the other after training, and that bilateral transfer is asymmetric (better when you start with the dominant limb), it did not take long before defenders were unable to stop my movements whether I was going right or left, both hands were equally as good in performing the task.