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This past year I recently picked up Olympic Weightlifting.  It is a sport where you not only need to be strong but you need to have great technique. When I first started to Olympic weightlift my gains increased dramatically.  Every week it seemed like I could lift more and more weight as I figured out which strategies were most efficient.  Since I was still figuring out these strategies my lifts were very inconsistent.  On one set the lifts would feel good and I'd feel confident and then on the next set they would be all over the place.  As the months progressed I started getting more comfortable and my lifts were getting more consistent.  My improvements were not as dramatic as they were in the beginning but I progressed consistently.

In the beginning I was in the the cognitive stage of learning where performance is based off your ability to take in and process information. The gains in this stage are dramatic and it is all about testing different strategies and finding which ones work and which ones do not. As the months continued I went into the associative stage of learning. In this stage motor patterns are beginning to be established which helps the movements become more fluid and consistent. In this stage you have found the right strategies to use and have thrown away the ones that are not effective. The improvements in this stage are not as big as the cognitive stage but there are still gradual gains. As I continue to Olympic Weightlift I will get into the autonomous stage where the movement becomes automatic. I will be able to detect errors and correct them as I am performing the movement and I will not have to think about the movements at all while I am doing them. My improvements will eventually start to level off and plateau based off the law of practice. It is a negatively accelerated curve that represents the dramatic increase in performance in the cognitive stage and then the leveling off of performance as you pass through the associative and autonomous stages.

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When I first starting throwing a football at the age of 5 my throws were so wobbly and I could barely throw the football to my Dad standing 10 yards away.  I practiced every day and I still couldn't throw a consistent spiral, it was so frustrating. Then in gym class that week we just happened to be in a football unit so practiced how to throw a football. My gym teacher went through the step by step mechanics of how to throw a football but in a way kindergartners could understand.  He told us to act the like football was a glass of water and to first bring that glass of water up to your ear, then dump that glass of water behind your shoulder and then throw it at your partner.  My first throw was a perfect spiral.  Every time before I threw the ball I would picture myself with that glass of water and dumping it behind my shoulder and every throw would be a perfect spiral.

Consolidation is the process in which a new memory is gradually transferred to long term memory.  A strategy to enhance consolidation with motor skills is to use imagery to demonstrate the movement.  By using imagery it breaks down complex movement patterns into simpler tasks that are easier to be reproduced and processed.  So instead of thinking of all of the complex arm angles and movements associated with throwing the football.  All I imagined was dumping a glass of water over my shoulder.  A task that is much easier to visualize, understand and perform. As a result, I picked up on the skill much quicker than I would have without it!

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I was golfing with my brother one day and I was playing pretty good. My swing was in rhythm and I was striking the ball cleanly on almost every shot. I felt more confident with my swing than I ever have before. As the round progressed, we caught up to a couple of professional golfers that my brother knew. They asked if we wanted to play with them and of course we said yes. But as we got to our next hole I started to regret my decision. All the confidence I had gained on the last couple of holes was completely thrown out the window. When it was my turn to tee off I was so nervous.  I wanted more than anything to show off to these professional golfers and hit a great shot so I took a couple of extra practice swings and went through each part of the swing in my head as I was lining up my shot. I stepped up to the ball, drew the club back, swung and followed through. I looked down and the ball had just barely made it off the tee. I had almost missed the ball completely, I had no idea what had happened.  I was feeling so confident before and hitting the ball so good, but somehow my swing was thrown off.

I choked under pressure in this situation by trying to use declarative memory for my golf swing instead of procedural memory. I thought too much about the swing itself and the different parts that make up the swing instead of just doing it. The act of me trying think through every part of the swing activated my declarative memory, so when I execute the skill that was the memory I tried to use. But since my golf swing was unconscious and automatic in my procedural memory when I tried to execute it with declarative memory my swing was out of wack.  The result was a swing that resembled the gif below.

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When I was in 6th grade I played on the local traveling baseball team. It was very competitive team so I wanted to improve my hitting. I did everything I could, I watched Youtube videos, got extra batting practice, and did numerous drills that were supposed to help my hitting.  Then my Dad found this device that was guaranteed to improve your swing. This device was a baseball connected to a strap that would wrap around a pole.  Once the ball wrapped all the way around the pole it would unravel with some speed and you were supposed to hit it once it unraveled. I used this device for hours and at first I wasn't very good at it, but with practice I got to the point where I could go multiple swings in a row without having the ball lose any momentum. I felt so confident going into my next game that I was going to hit a home run, but my first at bat I struck out on three pitches. My next at bat was the same story and I ended up not getting a hit the whole tournament. I had gotten so used to hitting a baseball coming at me from below with that device that when a pitcher threw the ball the spatial location of the ball was different and my timing was way off.

Negative transfer is when prior practice or experience of a skill makes the person perform worse on the skill than without having done that prior practice. This results in situations where the prior practice of the skill and skill itself have either different environmental or movement characteristics. In my case the device I practiced with the baseball stayed the same height and speed every time I hit it.  But in a real game the the height of the baseball changes along with the speed, since these two environmental factors were different there was a negative transfer.

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Bartolo Colon, bless his heart, continues to try - emphasis on try - to hit while playing in the National League. If the Mets marketing team was smart they'd start selling shirts that read, "I went to Citi Field and all I got were three lousy at bats by Bartolo Colon." The Mets don't seem to have a sense of humor about Colon, so this will never happen. Oh well.

Colon proved much better on the mound, throwing 7 1/3 scoreless innings and striking out nine in the Mets 5-0 victory.

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Bartolo Colon Trying to Hit Continues to Provide Amusing Baseball GIFs

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Bartolo Colon, bless his heart, continues to try - emphasis on try - to hit while playing in the National League. If the Mets marketing team was smart they'd start selling shirts that read, "I went to Citi Field and all I got were three lousy at bats by Bartolo Colon."

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When I was turning 8 one summer my Dad decided I was old enough to start water skiing. So there I was strapped to two skis with my Dad floating behind me telling me what to do.  "Bend knees, keep your ankles loose and let the boat pull you up." But time and time again I would face plant into the water. My Dad didn't know what to say to help me, so he decided to just show me instead. I did not believe my Dad, we he said he was going to show me. He hasn't skied in 15 years, there was no way he still knew how! If he couldn't even explain to me how to do it then how was he supposed to do it himself? But little did I know, my Dad at age of 45, throws on skis and instantly gets up and starts cutting back and forth across the wake.  It had been years since my Dad had water skied but it looked like he had never stopped.

For motor skills, we have a better long term memory for continuous skills, like water skiing, than for discrete skills.  As time goes on we lose the ability to verbally describe the skill, but we can still perform it perfectly.  My Dad's memory of skiing was all located in his procedural memory not his declarative memory.  This is why my Dad couldn't put into words how to help me water ski, but once he was strapped in he could perform the skill without a hitch.