# data[].attributes.body
The end of the season had come faster than it ever had before. All of a sudden I was putting on my tech suit, getting ready to race one last time. I was also eating a lot of pasta, but that is beside the point.

The last time I was tapered and racing in my tech suit, I was at the top of my game. Last time, I was confident. This time, I was unsure if I was ready. I didn't want to let myself or my team down. This was my last race, and it had to be good.

I stepped up on the block for the last time for the 200 freestyle. The funny thing about racing is that it always look sos fast from the outside, but when you are the one racing, it seems as if it will never end. I knew I had to give it my all, one last time.

I touched the wall and looked up at the score board to see that I had placed 2nd, but more importantly, I beat my personal record. After not having raced in months, I was shocked and incredibly proud of myself.

Knowing what I know now, I can attribute my great performance in part to positive transfer. Although I hadn't put on a tech suit and actually raced in months, the hours of practice helped me get my best time. In practice, we worked on the small details of our strokes, as well as general conditioning, but we never raced in practice. Both in practice and at the meet, there were similar movement characteristics, and the background forces were the same. This means that between practice and performance, there was in fact positive transfer which helped me to perform better than I ever had.

The picture I chose was taken after this meet with two of my best friends and supporters and all of our hard earned medals.

# data[].attributes.body
The day had finally come where I was cleared to get back into practice. Jumping into the pool again for my first real practice in months, I was nervous, but also so very excited. This is something I had waiting months for, but I was scared that I was going to let myself and my coach down.

Coach Kevin was unlike any other coach I had ever had. He was a self proclaimed sports psychologist because he had "the will to handle 30 teenage girls." All jokes aside, he was an amazing coach. Not only did he have years of both swimming and coaching under his belt, but he knew what kind of coaching style each of us needed and would personalize his coaching style to meet our individual needs.

When I first came back to practice, he picked up on the fact that I was nervous and helped me get through it, one day at a time. For the first few weeks I was very unsure of myself and looked for feedback on almost everything that I did whether it was in the pool or in the weight room. Kevin was a kinesiology major and learned about augmented feedback. He knew that if he gave me feedback after everything that I did, that I would become dependent on it. While I may not have liked it at the time, I now know that not giving feedback after every trial was a good thing, and made me a better athlete in the end.

The picture I chose was taken at one of my swim meets. It was after I had swam the 200 freestyle and was talking to Kevin about what went well and what didn't. He didn't give us feedback on everything we did in practice but he made sure to talk to each of us after every one of our races.

# data[].attributes.body
In physical therapy, there were a lot of different exercises and movements that I had never done before. Some of the movements, like the one using the BOSU ball, require balance which I severely lack. Using the concepts we learned about in class, I now know more about how I learned these movements during my time in the clinic. As we learned about the motor learning processes in class, I was able to relate them back to what I did in physical therapy to better understand each topic, especially the stages of motor learning.

Using Gentile's 2 stage model of motor learning, I can better understand how I learned these movements. This will also help me to become a better physical therapist and teach others similar movements in the future.

For a while, I was just getting familiar with the clinic, my therapist, and the exercises she wanted me to do. Each new exercise started with getting the idea for the movement. My therapist would first show me the movement and then I would try it myself. Sometimes I would need several trials in order to figure out what muscles to use and how to use them. After experimenting with different approaches to completing each movement, I figured out what worked best for me. Once I had figured out what worked and what didn't, I moved into the second stage which included refining the movement patterns to produce them correctly, consistently, and efficiently. I also worked on bring these skill and working my muscles outside of the clinic to integrate them into everyday life.

The picture I chose are the exercises my physical therapist gave to me in one of our first sessions. In addition to the bi-weekly clinic sessions, I performed each exercise twice a day at home.

# data[].attributes.body
After 6 weeks in a boot, my doctor had decided to have me go to physical therapy to rebuild muscle that I had lost in my right leg. To say I was overwhelmed would be an understatement. The first session or two were all about introductions and trying different exercises throughout the clinic. As we progressed, the exercises became increasingly more difficult. One of the most challenging exercises I remember was balancing on one foot on the flat side of a BOSU ball while throwing balls at a target. The first time I tried it I couldn't even get my balance let alone performing the additional aiming task. As time went on and as the muscles in my foot and ankle became stronger, I was able to do both the balancing and the aiming tasks at the same time.

Looking back, I know that my struggles at the beginning of my therapy could have been due to attention limitations. We learned that if two tasks cannot be performed well simultaneously, then both are thought to require some of our limited attention. In my therapy, I was not able to put any of my limited attention into the aiming task, as the balancing task took up all of the attention that I had. My capacity was exceeded with just the balancing task, but as I practiced that skill more, it took up less of my attention. I was then able to put some of my attention to the aiming task.

I chose this picture to represent how I felt during these first few sessions of my physical therapy. It was really hard to struggle with such simple tasks, but I knew that I would get through it eventually.

# data[].attributes.body
The summer between my junior and senior years in high school, I was at the peak of my athletic career. Instead of sleeping in every day and hanging out with friends at the beach, I was waking up at 6am and training over 30 hours each week. I had convinced myself that more training meant faster times at the end of the season, even though many people had told me that I was "overdoing it" and that I needed to relax a bit.

Being the stubborn 17 year old girl that I was, I decided that what I was doing was fine. Obviously with this much training I was going to be sore. However, I started to have pain in my right foot which had never happened before. For a while I blew it off, thinking that it would go away eventually. Spoiler alert: I was wrong.

I told my mom what was going on and that I had been feeling this pain for a few weeks now. She immediately made me an appointment for x-rays and my doctor confirmed my worst nightmare: I had broken my foot from overuse.

Looking back, I now realize what all of my coaches and friends were telling me. With the amount of practice and training I was doing combined with the intensity of it all, I had seriously overdone it. From the concepts we learned about in class regarding distribution and amount of practice, I now understand that I was the only one to blame for breaking my foot. I essentially over learned to the point where it became dangerous. The high amount of practice paired with the high intensity of the practice caused my foot to break under pressure. Had I given myself more rest time and taken more time to relax, my story could have been far different.

I chose this picture to represent how I felt in the weight room, considering how small I am and how big a lot of people who lift weight are.