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When I was preparing for my powerlifting meet I found it helpful to visualize my lifts before I would attempt them. Before a heavy squat I would prepare myself to have the weight on back. I would visualize my hands wrapping around the bar, the feeling of the bar settling between my posterior deltoid and scapular spine on each side. I would imagine the feeling of unracking the weight and taking those very deliberate 3 steps backward. I imagine wiggling my feet to the right angles, next comes my deep breath and bracing. I picture my descent, imagine the feelings in my joints when I'm at depth so I know when I can start the ascent. I visualize the ascent and imagine the feeling of the weight on my back. Then, finally I envision reracking the weight and stepping out from under the bar. In addition to that internal imagery I also imagine what an observer would see when watching me perform the squat (external imagery). I performed this mental practice because I thought it might help me perform better, which I now know is supported by research. What I was surprised to also learn is that it may actually help make me stronger as well. Based on the Smith et al., 2001 and Yue et al., 2003 studies we discussed in class there may be strength gains just through mental practice (although of course I'll still actually lift weights instead of only thinking about it). I chose the image below because the video of me squatting exceeded the file size limit and because it represents me mentally practicing the movement. Although I may not be as expressive in my visualizations.

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I'm in human anatomy lab this semester and the two most recent units have been about lower and upper extremity anatomy. Compared to the previous units that focused on the head and torso, these were relatively easier because I can palpate the structures we are talking about in class. This led to change the way I studied a little bit. We needed to know the locations (origin, insertion), actions, and innervations of the muscles. So, as we would find the muscles on the cadaver tissue and I would learn the actions I would practice finding the muscle on myself (palpate it) and performing the action associated with the muscle. I was storing semantic memories of the origins, insertions, actions, and innervations of the muscles that I needed to learn. At the same time I was also storing the procedural memory of reaching to palpate the muscle and the action of the muscle. When it came time to take the exam I was amused to find myself automatically making the actions I had stored in my procedural memory when trying to access my semantic memory. I chose the gif below because I'm sure that's what I looked like to other people taking the exam. But I think it helped me to have stored the memories both semantically and procedurally so if I couldn't come up with the answer with one I had a second chance to think of it based on the other. I.e. if a question asked for the actions of the long head of the biceps femoris I was able to flex my knee, extend my hip, and laterally rotate my knee to remember and write those actions down (which is actually what I did just now).

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For almost 6 months now I have been coaching a friend of mine at the gym in an attempt to help him get on the cheerleading team. Tryouts were a week ago and we just found out he made it. This was my first time coaching someone for any real length of time so I had to learn quite a bit about how to approach the whole process. Teaching the movements, programming, instruction, modification, injury, all of it. One significant part of our plan was to get him as strong as we could, especially overhead pressing strength. To accomplish that goal I taught him how to squat (and variations of the squat), how to deadlift (and variations of the deadlift), how to bench (and variations of the bench, and importantly how to overhead press (and variations of the overhead press). While he was learning the movements I had to determine what kind of feedback to give and how much feedback to give. Certain things he was able to tell like whether or not he completed the lift (task intrinsic feedback) but things like bar path, depth, or other minor adjustments were not as clear. I would help him make those adjustments by telling him what he needed to change at first (what I now know to be augmented feedback; in this case specifically prescriptive knowledge of performance). As he got better at the movements I gave less feedback because I didn't want him to rely on my feedback (I now know that my hunch was correct because concurrent augmented feedback can have a negative learning effect). My reduced frequency I now can call fading. And now at this point in his training I only give feedback if something is very wrong or if asks for it (self-selected frequency is now what I know that to be). I don't have training footage of him so I selected a video of myself. We would look at video of his sets together and we would see if there was anything we noticed that should be changed. This occasional video knowledge of performance helped him improve and learn.

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For most of high school I played ultimate frisbee. When I first started I could barely get the disc to fly straight with the normal backhand throw that most everyone knows. But over time and with the help of my coaches I learned to curve my throws around defenders, throw flicks/forehands, throw hammers (not the tool it's another type of throw), and a few other throws as well. Then, myself and a few other teammates became interested in seeing how well we could throw with our left hands. And to our collective surprise we found that our left-handed throws were better than our right-handed throws when we had first started. We figured it had to do with just knowing how to throw better with our dominant hands but didn't know there was an actual term for what we experienced - bilateral transfer. Subsequently it was also easier for us to progress our non-dominant hand throws than it was to first learn the throws. One of my teammates was also interested in seeing how far he could push this learning. He could already throw very well with his dominant hand and was alright with his non-dominant hand, but he wanted to see if he could throw with his foot. He did better than I thought but it wasn't exactly pretty or practical. I found a video of a different person actually performing a successful throw with their foot to score a point, though. I chose this video because I think it better represents the ceiling for learning transfer compared to someone learning to throw with both hands. Because once you've seen this video most other throws just don't seem so impressive anymore.

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A few years ago I came across a video of someone doing tricks with a butterfly knife. I thought that was pretty cool so I decided to get one and see if I could learn a few tricks. The stakes are high because you're playing with a sharp knife so I never had to worry about fatigue negatively impacting my learning or performance. My biggest challenge was trying to put all the pieces of the trick together. The whole trick has to be done as one nearly seamless motion in order for it to look good and, generally, to complete the trick, period. But, there are lots of little pieces to the trick that aren't usual hand positions or motions and thus they need practice. Butterfly knife tricks are high in complexity. This led me to think part practice would be a good choice because the complexity would be reduced. But I still had difficulty putting the pieces together because butterfly knife tricks are also high in organization. Of course I didn't know those terms (whole vs part practice, high complexity, high organization) at the time but through trial and error I determined that I couldn't practice the whole trick right away because I couldn't even complete it all. But I also couldn't try to separate the parts of the trick because I wasn't able to combine them despite being able to complete them separately. So, what I settled on I now know to call "forward chaining" because I was adding the next piece onto the parts I already had down until I was able to complete the whole trick. At that point I could practice the whole trick until it looked smooth. I chose the video I attached because it's one of the harder tricks I learned and I remember having to do this exact process to get it to look like it does in the video.