# data[].attributes.body
At a young age, my parents signed me up for youth volleyball. Having no experience prior to attending that first practice, I definitely did not feel confident in the movements that were associated with playing the sport. In fact, I didn’t do much moving at all. My goal was to keep to myself with the least amount of room for error. Minimizing movement meant minimizing embarrassment. Or so I thought. I quickly realized that keeping to myself and remaining stiff while trying to play volleyball was not a successful tactic. I was inconsistent with my serve and my defense was nothing short of awful. However, gradually I became more confident in the task at hand. As a result, I found myself becoming more fluid with my movements. Before I knew it, I was moving around the court in a natural way, and the results were significantly better! I may not have been an expert right away, but I loosened up and somehow felt more in control of my movements and their outcomes.

The phenomenon that I had experienced is one of the common transitions that individuals go through as they progress through the stages of learning. While there are two models for stages of learning, both Fitts and Posner’s 3 stage model, and Gentile’s 2 stage model, a few commonalities can be found in the changes in performance as a learner progresses. The change that I demonstrated in this experience involved limb-segment coordination. As a beginner, people tend to freeze up their limb segments in order to decrease the degrees of freedom that they must control. When considering the arm alone, it can be argued that there are 7 degrees of freedom. When considering the body as a whole, those degrees of freedom increase a significant amount. That is a lot to monitor for someone with little to no experience in a given motor skill. However, as an individual gains confidence and more experience in a task, they begin to unfreeze those degrees of freedom in order to act in a more fluid manner to perform the skill. For myself, this shift in limb-segment coordination was evident in my gradual shift from remaining stiff and to myself towards loosening up and participating in the skill in a more natural flow.

# data[].attributes.body
Once I had dipped my toes into the sport of volleyball and really noticed myself becoming more comfortable with the learning process of it all, I began to notice that I had started to develop a stronger relationship with my coaching staff. They were often encouraging and provided immense amounts of feedback. I found this to be useful. Sure, if I missed a serve it was quite evident that I had made a mistake; however, with the help of my coach I was able to more accurately identify the source of the error and correct it. I appreciated that my coaches often helped me with the correction process given that early on I wasn’t necessarily confident in the correct processes to achieve the skills. That sort of feedback allowed me to become a quick learner. Before I knew it, my coaches were providing less and less feedback. I was able to feel the motion of my body and identify for myself where I went wrong on a given error. It was odd hearing less from my coaches, but it was evident that I was less dependent on them. I’m sure that was a good thing considering that allowed for more time to discuss game plans and less to focus on fundamentals. Soon I would be all set to be a top competitor with my teammates!

In this scenario, my learning was heavily influenced by intrinsic feedback. This form of feedback is naturally available when performing a skill. For example, through my proprioception and visual senses, I was fully capable of identifying an error such as missing a pass or a serve. With trial and error, I could use this sensory information to gather a plan for future encounters with similar motor tasks in the game of volleyball. However, the role of my coach was to enhance my learning with augmented feedback. Augmented feedback is defined as information provided about a task that is supplemental to , or augments intrinsic feedback. In the early stages of learning, this form of feedback was incredibly helpful to allow myself to get more comfortable with the task at hand. Some of my greatest coaches made sure to offer correct and constructive feedback. I also found that it was more useful for my coaches to provide me with feedback following a performance, rather than during my performance. As discussed in this course, augmented feedback may not be essential to learning a skill, but it can enhance the process when provided correctly. Through ensuring that the feedback was constructive and not overwhelming, my coaches allowed me to depend on my own intrinsic feedback while also getting supported by feedback that may not have been independently gathered. As a result, I was a quick learner!

# data[].attributes.body
One of the most difficult parts of being a defensive specialist on a fast paced volleyball team is figuring out what to visually pay attention to. At the age of 14, I was offered a position as a libero on a nationally competing club volleyball team. Ecstatic with this opportunity, I accepted. However, having previously only participated on regional level teams, my skills were not quite up to par with my competition’s. In fact, I often found myself late to balls and mis-passing serves. The pace was a dramatic shift that I was not initially equipped to take on. Having competed at a slower pace, I was able to defend the other team pretty effectively by visually paying attention to the ball. Unfortunately, this did not transfer to the quicker competition I was now facing. However, I did not let that discourage me. This opportunity showed me that there was room for improvement in my skills, and I was not going to let that scare me. As I progressively improved, I found it less and less necessary to visually track where the ball was on the other side of the net. In fact, it was increasingly important to pay attention to the location of the other team’s players, as well as the location of my team’s block being set. The ball then had only a minor contribution to the visual sensory information that I felt necessary to be the best defender on the court. And sure enough, I improved tremendously!

In Kines 361, visual search was defined as the process of directing visual attention to locate relevant environmental cues. When comparing an expert to a novice and their performance of a certain skill, it is important to note that experts perform more efficient visual search. For example, in the early stages of learning how to drive, a novice may spend a significant amount of time looking at the center line along the road. On the other hand, an expert may be more focused on projecting their visual search further down the road in order to plan ahead and execute a smooth driving pattern. This visual search pattern often can only be trained through experience. For myself, my initial visual tracking patterns were not as efficient as one that an expert may use. I was in a more novice stage of being a libero on a competitive volleyball team. However, with experience, I naturally was able to shift my visual tracking to conduct it in a more efficient manner. This shift in visual attention is an additional indication of progression through the stages of learning.

# data[].attributes.body
As each season progressed, I learned to love going to practice just as much as competing in games and tournaments. I never really knew what to expect for those 2 hour long periods. Would we scrimmage that day? Focus on serve receive? Would I get a chance to perfect my serve? Each day was something different. One day we would practice serve receive, followed immediately by playing defense. That was one of my favorite drills. It allowed me to practice arguably the two most important skills for my position. Passing under the pressure of a serve is quite different from passing through a long rally, so I liked being able to combine the two. That was more realistic when considering how a game would play out. My least favorite drill would be doing reps of serve receive for what felt like hours. This type of practice seemed to lack a positive impact on my performance. It was predictable and boring, not to mention it was not transferable to a game like situation. Following those drills, I felt that my improvement was little to none. Drills that incorporated more than one skill, or were short and allowed for other skills to be practiced were more enjoyable. It was after those types of drills that I felt I got the most practice and improvement.

My experiences at practice emphasize the importance of practice variability. As discussed in Kines 361, randomizing practice has benefits in the process of learning a skill. For the drill that was just serve receive, that can be considered blocked practice. One skill is practiced for a period of time. Randomized practice involves various skills being practiced at varying times. This form of practice is on the high end of contextual interference. As a result, each time a new skill is presented, the individual must reconstruct a plan of action to complete it. This requires lots of cognitive activity, which in the long run allows for an individual to more easily remember how to perform the skill. This makes the skill more easily transferable into game situations. As a result, even the drills that had a serial like format that involved serve receive followed by defense in a rally had a greater learning capacity than blocked drills. Quite literally, any form of randomization was better than blocked practice. Not only do those forms of drills do a better job of keeping participants' attention, they also have been proven to be more effective in performance improvement!