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This summer I have had the opportunity to start driving a boat in the ski show. This was an important task that required a lot of direction and focus to learn. I had run the pattern the boat needed to take for my specific part many times and I was ready to try it in the show. I grabbed my radio and happily ran to my boat to get ready for my opening night. As I parked in my starting spot and turned my radio on, one of my guy friends on shore started to talk to me. He was giving me advice about when to go and what to be extra aware of. The show began and I started to do my pattern. My friend continued to give me direction which actually stressed me out more than during the practice run through. I tried to block out what he was saying and do what I practiced but his feedback was confusing me as I tried to perform my skill. When the act finished, I was frazzled and overwhelmed by all the information I had tried to process during the act. I was experiencing my friend giving me concurrent augmented feedback. Instead, the next time I performed in the show I did much better and the small hints that I needed to perfect we told to me after I was done. This information after the performance was receive a lot clearer and I was able to do the next show perfectly. The information that was given to me after the performance is called Terminal Feedback and often is received better than concurrent feedback that is given during the performance. One is able to focus more on the information when it is given after rather than trying to perform the skill and take feedback from another source.

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From the start of my volleyball career, I always had trouble with my serve. I was rushing it and not taking my time to observe the court and perform each step of the serve with purpose. When I got to high school, my coach now added the challenge of having to hit certain spots with my serve. I struggled hitting the spots because my focus was just on getting the ball over the net. As time went on, my coach broke down the serve and reminded me about the importance of taking my time. I now had five parts to my serve: hold the ball out in front of me, draw back my right hand, open my hand and fingers, pause and look at my target then throw up the ball and hit it over. The important set of my serving process was the pause and looking at the intended location of my serve. This is known as the quiet eye of visual search and motor skill performance. Quiet eye refers to the period when the athlete or individual has their last gaze before performing the skill. Quiet eye helped me slow down my serve and hit specific spots my coach asked me to hit.
(check out step 1 for the Quiet Eye pause before the serve)

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With waterskiing being such a high risk sport, I have been exposed to many different types of injuries that have affected the motor skills of individuals. My friend Alisha’s sister Maddie was one of these individuals. She was taking off the dock and the rope got wrapped around her hand and ripped her viciously off the dock. From this Maddie broke her finger. As others do, Maddie braced her finger and began the healing process. Unfortunately, Maddie began to lose control of her hand and develop the rare disease called Morphea and Linear Scleroderma. Morphea caused her skin to harden and become discolored. Scleroderma made her hand develop another layer of skin. With her skin hardening and the added layer, Maddie struggled to fully function her hand as it was forever curled up and unable to straighten. This distorted her hand-arm steadiness ability to make fine movements and position her hand when strength and speed are not needed very difficult. Maddie noticed the struggle when trying to grasp different items or even hold her eating utensils. Maddie still continues to battle this disease but is working with PTs to gain control slowly back.
(in the image below, look at maddie's left hand)

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 Madeleine Stewart on Instagram: "Proud to say that my hat stayed on the whole doubles run 🎅🏽🎄 #yeww #showskiing #christmasshow"

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99 likes, 1 comments - madeleine.stewart on December 20, 2015: "Proud to say that my hat stayed on the whole doubles run 🎅🏽🎄 #yeww #showskiing #christmasshow". 

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Madeleine Stewart (@madeleine.stewart)

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What happens when the environment changes?

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What happens when the environment changes?

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With waterskiing being such a unique type of sport, there are many different devices that have been invented to help those new to the sport try to pick it up faster. Land practice is one of the most important aspects of waterskiing aside from actually skiing on the water. To stress the importance of land practice, a guidance device was invented called the Swivulator. This guidance device allows one to strap their personal ski to a machine that then lets them use a rope that “simulates the pull from a boat”. Growing up, I never used this device so when I recently tried it I was amazed at how unalike the guidance device was to the actually act of swivel waterskiing behind the boat. The pull by the handle was much more difficult that behind the boat therefore when girls used this device to practice in the winters and before their sets on the water, they were making bad habits. Although guidance devices can help increase muscle memory and slow down the learning process stages, I do not think that they should be used. Learning hand placement for tricks on land is helpful but when these girls hit the water their environment completely changes. They start to experience waves, not a constant speed and a different pull on the rope causing their control of their swivel ski to be lost. Many sports are using these guidance devices to breakdown the full act of the sport when I truly believe that in order for one to perfect their skills one needs to experience game-like environments to excel.

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During the year of 2014, I sadly tore my ACL in a soccer game. After the surgery, I knew I had a long recovery ahead of me. I was going to have to teach myself to walk again. I began PT with a stimulator being placed on my quad muscle to help strengthen it since the muscle had completely faded after not being used for so long. Finally when the muscle developed more, I was able to try walking without my brace again. I experience the importance of multi-limb coordination as I tried to time my steps with my other leg. Multi-limb coordination is ability to coordinate the movement of a number of limbs at the same time. Furthermore, the brace had made me used to having my leg completely straight so learning how to bend it and coordinate with the other leg was very difficult. My PT had me try several different exercises to help coordinate my legs and even arms while walking. One of those was a series of lines on the floor that were equally spread apart and I had to place one foot on the line each step. Walking seemed like such a simple task until it was taken away from me for such a long time. After my two legs began to coordinate with each other through lots of practice, exercises and repetition, I was able to finally walk again.

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Water-skiing has always been my passion in life. As time has gone on I have learned different techniques that have helped me develop more skills faster. One of those was using bilateral transfer to do different tricks on my swivel waterski. Bilateral Transfer occurs when one limb learns something new and does several trials of it that when the other limb tries it improvement is made faster. When water-skiing there are two ways to spin, reverse and regular. Regular spinning is learned first and for a right leg skier means spinning to the right or clockwise. Reverse spinning is learned later and for a right leg skier means spinning to the left or counterclockwise. Learning how to do a 1 arm regular spin with my right arm on my swivel ski took me a year to learn how to do. After I had mastered my 1 arm regular spin with my right arm, I tried the reverse spin with my left arm. My reverse 1 arm spin with my left arm only took me 1 set to learn how to do. This is due to the bilateral transfer that was gained by my left arm from all the right arm trials. This same idea of bilateral transfer has helped me improve my skills set with numerous water-ski tricks.

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I have always loved watching sports on TV. My favorite sport to watch is soccer. The motor skills it takes for one to dribble down the field amazes me to this day. After being introduced to the different classification skills in this class, it has helped me understand the sport more. When watching the soccer games, many players are using different foot skills to fake out their opponents. As they dribble down the field they are using many muscles in their body to maneuver the ball with speed classifying the skill as a gross motor skill. A gross motor skill can be defined as a skill using a large portion of your body. As we further examine the skill, one would determine if it is discrete, continuous or a serial motor skill. Dribbling a soccer ball is the perfect example of a continuous motor skill because there is no defined beginning and end to the skill. Someone could dribble the whole field or get the ball stolen from them in a second. Lastly, the environment is open because there could be bumps on the field affecting the dribbling of the ball as well as a strong wind pushing the ball away from the player’s desired course. With this knowledge about dribbling a soccer ball, I am able to understand the game more and the movements that different players are making.

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Growing up, I enjoyed playing a variety of different sports. I focused on hockey for a while and realized how important the combination of speed and accuracy are for the sport to excel. I can recall doing different drills to perfect each independently. For example, we would play Sharks and Minnos to enhance our speed during pressure situations. For accuracy, our coach would place a smaller net where the bigger net was so that we all had to learn to score on a smaller net. From here, both these perfected speed and accuracy skills were put together when we scrimmaged. Players had to skate fast down the rink and face a goalie now requiring accuracy of the puck to score. Although, I do recall one drill where my coach was pushing for my team to be quicker to the net. We had to skate around orange cones at the center line and pass back and forth and shoot at the net at the end. I sped down the ice towards the goal, focusing super hard on my speed then didn’t realize the goal approaching so fast and as I went to shoot I completely missed the goal and took a nice wipeout. This lead me to realize during the drill if I focused on increasing my speed my accuracy of shooting was altered. This is a prime example of the speed-accuracy trade-off. When I began to focus on making my shot instead, I lost speed during the drill. To find this balance between my speed and accuracy was hard and took a lot of practice to improve on.