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I started playing soccer when I was 4 years old. I played all through school and wanted to be the next Mia Hamm (didn't we all). I always preferred using my right foot, because I was right handed, and considered that my dominant foot for the longest time. It wasn't until on my high school varsity team which all of a sudden, it seemed I was equally capable when kicking with my left foot. I discovered this kind of accidentally and it was awesome. This equal capability drew my coach's attention at tryouts because I was able to cross the ball easily from the left side of the field, while many players hesitated and would prefer to cut back to their right foot to cross the ball. My newly discovered bipedal coordination was awesome! I was equally capable of using my right or my left foot in the game, which was difficult for opposing teams to defend. It also meant I was more adaptable if a pass or ball was not quite perfectly placed, because I was comfortable using either foot.

This is an example of my feet having asymmetric coordination, because at any given instance in the game my right leg can be the plant foot while my left is striking the ball and vice-versa. I was able to feel much more confident on the field and move freely without the ball, knowing that I had confidence in myself to use either foot when I was dribbling, passing, or shooting.

Below is a Gif of one of my goals from high school where I used my left foot.

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When coaching, I often use demonstrations to show my players how something is done. Whether its walking through an opponent's play during a scouting report, or showing the footwork they should use when coming off a screen, players are most receptive to demonstrations. If I was asked to use declarative memory instead of procedural, it would be extremely difficult for my message to get across. I can manage to use little conscious memory when doing a post move, it just has become so natural for me. Since procedural memory has to do with how to perform the skill, rather than knowing about it, I am easily able to perform the skill through making the movement rather than verbally explaining.

The simpler the post move, like an up and under, I could probably verbalize the steps using declarative memory. I might say "on the right block, take your left foot and pivot towards the center of the lane while you fake up, then take that same foot and step towards the basket and shoot". Even as I typed that out, it was harder to verbalize than I expected! Procedural memory makes much more sense in this instance of my everyday life of coaching.

Here is a video of an up and under, which like I said is not super complex. However, sometimes finding the right words to explain is harder than showing the how-to.

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I wish I knew exactly how many free throws I have attempted in my life. In practice, at the park, in a game, the list goes on. I've shot SO many that I could describe to someone every step in the process and still manage to be critical of myself. In my competitive years of basketball, basically varsity onto my four years in college, I can honestly say I struggled with free throws. It is such a simple movement pattern, with a certain rhythm to it that actually makes it harder to the shooter than it really is. Free throws can be mocked in practice or in the gym shooting by yourself, but the in-game pressure and heat of the moment in that game environment can mess up the simple form and pattern that I've done thousands of times.

I have not had an instance where I choked in a tight, end-of-game situation and my team lost because of my free throw, but I'd say my "choking" happened when its just one of those days where the ball does not bounce my way. I would start over thinking about my shot. Was I not bending my knees enough? Did my followthrough not go like it usually does? Maybe I heard noise in the crowd that distracted me as I shot... since I was over thinking and analyzing my shot, which is controlled by nonconscious procedural memory and forces it into declarative memory, the outcome of my shot was worse (Flegal et al, 2008). This was not the case all the time. Sometimes it would be like a 50/50 thing when I would shoot 1-2 from the line after getting fouled. If I missed the first shot, usually depending on how it felt leaving my hand or seeing where it hit the rim, I could make a slight adjustment for the second shot and that one would swish. However, going 1-2 repeatedly at the line would leave me at 6-12 in a game, which unfortunately I did once.

I wanted to use a Gif of an actual free throw I made. This free throw was in the quarterfinal of the conference tournament, where I made 3-4 free throws at the end of the game to seal the victory 59-54. This made free throw was also my 1000th career point.

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On October 12, 2017, I experienced the most excruciating pain of my life. What started out as a regular Thursday night playing co-ed slow pitch softball turned into one wrong step, and a trip to the UW Emergency Room. Long story short: I ruptured my right patellar tendon.

Surgery was October 25, two weeks later. The biggest struggles I overcame a few weeks later when I was trying to activate my quad muscles and managed to actually raise my straight leg off the ground when I was seated. Since the tendon was reattached, my leg needed to stay straight to allow the tendon to properly heal. I managed to learn to navigate on my crutches without actively bending my knee for about 9 weeks. Not using my leg led to immediate atrophy in my quad, and it soon looked like a noodle with no muscle. I distinctly remember when my physical therapist told me to flex my quad, and my brain wanted to do it, but my muscles did not! There was a breakdown in the proprioceptors in my quad muscles in my affected leg. My left leg was no problem to raise and use, but my right leg did not want to cooperate.

This is where feedforward control came into play. In my mind, I was anticipating what this straight leg raise should look like, what it would take for the leg to achieve this position, and how I needed to focus on muscle activation. At the time, I remember thinking so hard ahead of the simple movement and thinking this was never going to end! Kind of similar to Ian in The Man Who Lost His Body film, I trained and trained my quad muscles to activate when necessary. It was astonishing to me how not using my muscles in my right quad meant that the muscles needed to be re-taught how to be used.

Now, 9 months later, I have returned to most the activities I love! Still building strength, but my patellar tendon has completely healed from the rupture. Enjoy the MRI scan below of my knee from the side view :) the patellar tendon is supposed to look like a straight black line, while the surgeon said mine looked "like a shriveled piece of bacon"

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I'm a pretty fast typist and always have been able to type fast compared to my peers. Even back in grade school, we had a computer literacy class we took every year. Typing games were some of my favorites because they were fun and I was good at it. To this day, I feel confident when I'm typing papers or taking notes, or doing this scrapbook as we speak. But sometimes I get going too fast that I am more prone to mistakes!

I will be typing away and then have to hit the backspace 4 or 5 times in a row just to fix the errors that I made. Sometimes its not that big of a deal. But when I am on a deadline and trying to be efficient and fast, somethings gotta give! There are some really important times for my coaching job where I will be making the scouting report on the opponent we play, and I have to be extra cautious to not type their statistics or jersey number wrong. There's a big difference between 2.1 and 12.1 points per game when the final product is typed out.

So even though sometimes I feel like Jim Carrey in this Gif as I type near my 95 words per minute speed, my accuracy can take a toll. Thats why I always try to proof read.

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In recent months, I feel like my go-go-go schedule constantly has me going from one thing to the next. Whether its work, class, working out, basketball practice, or anything else on my plate, I usually bring food with me in the car or end up stopping somewhere convenient. My personal favorite is when I can get what I need at a Kwik Trip.

However this has led to a very bad habit: eating while driving. I have been really good at not using my phone in the car ever since the "Do Not Disturb While Driving" setting on my iPhone, and having Bluetooth to talk hands-free... but eating is too tempting and at times necessary as its the only 15-20 minutes I have between things. In my 8, almost 9 years of driving so far since turning 16, I have not been in any accidents (knock on wood). I just noticed my eating while driving has gotten worse. I should probably wake up earlier in the morning to at least prevent breakfast from happening in the car.

Since both tasks require some of my limited attention capacity,  most likely with where I am driving, neither task can be performed in their best form. I'm usually spilling or dropping something, which then makes me annoyed I got crumbs on my car. Interference for me usually occurs with one or the other suffering, rarely both to a major degree. Since I'm eating and it requires at least one hand, structural interference is taking place because I can't have two hands on the wheel or my eyes on the road.

Hopefully the worst that happens is some Cheerios that end up between my seats. But I never take a bowl with milk in the car...just a bag of dry cereal so the Gif below wouldn't happen to me!

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My relationship with tennis is mostly love-hate (pun intended). Its fun as a recreational activity to me which I never played as a serious sport. Sometimes I regret not pursuing it, but I get way too frustrated when I play.

Nowadays, I enjoy playing tennis against my boyfriend about 95% of the time. The other 5% are when I am anticipating him to hit a regular forehand shot, and he ends up slicing the ball with so much spin. The shot fools me and is so frustrating! Even if I can get my racquet on the ball, I struggle to return with a good hit. This event or spatial anticipation usually has not been something which I encountered in other sports I played. I can try to use spatial anticipation to the best of my ability, but my boyfriend could hit a hard cross court shot instead of that slice. I organize my response and start to position my body where I think the slice shot will land, but I probably need to do a better job at being able to read the position of my boyfriend's racquet.

This Gif accurately represents my reaction when I wrongly anticipate his shots.

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Despite being an athlete for most of my life, there are a handful of activities which make me feel like the most uncoordinated person on the face of the earth. One of these is slackline, where essentially a flat rope is bound between two trees. Slackline is a recreation activity requiring extreme balance, coordination, and strength. People can feel satisfied simply standing on a slackline, but the real challenge comes in coordinating one's body to walk across the slackline. Tricks and other alterations can be made to make the task more difficult, but I want to look at the simple idea of walking across this and why it is so hard for my coordination.

Turvey (1990) defines coordination as the patterning of head, body, and/or limb motions relative to the patterning of environmental objects and events. This two-part definition refers to both the segments of the body and the patterning of body parts related to the environment. The pattern of coordination required to walk across a slackline is different than the coordination needed to walk across a balance beam on a playground structure. It is truly a wild sensation to feel helpless to balance and take a stride when you are elevated maybe 18 inches off the ground and trying to gain balance on a slackline. Bending your leg, sticking your arms out, and keeping your eyes ahead on the slackline are all some basic tips given to me by a slackline expert, but it still did not translate and I could not take more than one step without losing balance.

My coordination vanished on the slackline, similar to Dwight from The Office in this Gif.