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Number 1: "I like to play sports" is an understatement

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Number 1: "I like to play sports" is an understatement

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Playing sports has always been one of my favorite past times. At very young age of 6 my journey started when I joined a youth soccer team and a dance company. From that moment on, I was hooked on performing motor skills in a game based setting. In elementary school, I joined a jump rope club for a number of years and was on a T-ball team. Throughout middle school, I was on a number of teams for various numbers of seasons. The sports I played during this time was was softball, basketball, volleyball, track, cross country, and swimming. I enjoyed each of these sports for different reasons, but decided to specialize in only two sports as I entered high school. Tennis and hurdling in track were my sports of choice all four years of high school and to fill up the winter months, I became an avid weight lifter. After high school ended and I entered into college, I was introduced to spike-ball, rowing, curling, and paddle-boarding. It is safe to say that I love playing sports, but even more than playing them, I love to learn new sports. Being introduced to a new motor challenge has always been exciting to me, which is why the three stages of learning by Fitts and Posner are so applicable to my life. The first stage in this model is the cognitive stage. In this stage, the ability of the individual is mostly verbal and cognitive. Strategies are developed to complete the motor task and there are dramatic improvements at the beginning of practice. Along with this, performance is very inconsistent. The second stage, Associative, is known as the refining stage. At this point the individual has established the most effective strategies to complete the motor tasks involved and they understand the environmental cues associated with the appropriate movements. A great aspect of being in this stage is that the learner can detect their own errors during the performance, allowing them to correct on their own. Finally, the last stage in this model is the autonomous stage. This stage is largely automatic in nature. Because of this, not everyone enters into this stage and could stay in the associative stage for their entire lifetime. In this stage, there is less interference form simultaneous activities and the processing information from other aspects of the task. The individual can also detect and correct errors while performing. I learned to play tennis when I was a Freshman in high school, so I can recall my experiences going through all three of these stages. When I was first starting out, I remember my coach explaining the movements I should make for each type of hit. During practice, I would think about the movements right before and while I was making them, plus trying to come up with strategies in my head for how to make my movements better. As I started playing games, I was very inconsistent in my hitting and serving ability making it difficult to win against opponents who have been playing tennis for a much longer time. Throughout my first season on the team, I made drastic improvements in my consistency in terms of hits and serves and I started to learn better strategies during game play to win points. This was my transition into the second stage of the 3-stage model by Fitts and Posner. Through the next season and a half, I was refining my tennis game. At this point, I had learned what strategies work and which ones don't. I was much more consistent during performance as well. During games, I was able to detect my own errors, and was able to talk with my coach about them or remind myself during down time of how to correct those errors. By the time I was a Junior in high school, I moved from the associative stage to the autonomous stage. At this time, I was able to automatically make the movements associated with each stroke in tennis, and could focus my thoughts on how to place the ball in order to win the point. During performance, I was also able to detect and correct my errors. If I hit one ground stroke a little off, I would instantly know exactly what I had done incorrectly and would be sure to correct it as I took my next hit at the ball. Below is a picture from a tournament I played in my first season on the tennis team (I'm the one on the left). The girl next to me was the number 1 singles player on our varsity team and was my hitting partner during practice. She taught me a lot during my first season, which resulted in the medal in my hand towards the end of the season!

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As mentioned earlier, I was introduced to the sport of paddle boarding after coming to college. I long-board, so paddle boarding was easy to learn because the main aspect needed for both is balance (positive transfer). My husband, Jade, and I decided that we wanted a bigger challenge in the task, so we both got onto on board in the water. This increases the difficultly by a lot because there is now two people affecting the stability of the board. We were doing pretty well at first, but then I decided it was a good time to lean back and tell Jade we were doing a good job at the task. I swung my head back and started talking, which resulted in a huge shift in weight on the board resulting in both of us wobbling all over the place trying to stabilize the board again. During this situation, capacity interference came into play. Capacity interference happens when there is a limitation in central capacity, like attention. Because I stopped focusing on my balance while on the paddle board and started thinking about sharing my thoughts with Jade, I changed my attention. This ultimately caused a decrement in my balance performance. The gif below represents Jade and my experience of unbalance on a 2-person paddle board since I don't have a picture of us from the experience (We stuck the landing unlike this lady).

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Number 3: If you're good at one, you're good at them all

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Number 3: If you're good at one, you're good at them all

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I referenced positive transfer in the previous story about paddle boarding, but I also have a story of a group of sports that I experienced positive transfer for. When I was a Junior in high school, the P.E. classes I was able to choose from was either team or individualized sports. I picked individual sports which consisted of sports like gymnastics, archery, pickle ball, table tennis, badminton, tennis, etc. At this time, I was already at a high level of ability in tennis mentioned in the first post. Because of this, I was able to see positive transfer happen for pickle ball, badminton, and table tennis in this P.E. class. The transfer of learning in general is the gain or loss in proficiency of one skill as a result of practice in some other skill. Positive transfer would be the gain. One theory involved with this is the "similarity of skill and context component." This states that the expected level of transfer increases as the number of similar elements between two tasks increases. The elements in this definition would be the observable movement patterns during the performance of a skill. This theory can be used to help explain why I felt I was able to perform so well at badminton, table tennis, and pickle ball even though I had only played table tennis and badminton a few times prior and never pickle ball. These three sports have similar "elements" to tennis which is why I was so proficient. Table tennis uses the same arm movement patterns as tennis for forehand strokes, it just doesn't extend through the full range of motion. Placement on the table during play is also very similar to that on a tennis court which helped in my strategy to win points. Badminton is similar to tennis in the set up of the court as well as the hand eye coordination needed with using a long racket. Pickle ball is basically tennis in a gym with a shorter net and short wooden paddles. The movement patterns for a forehand and backhand in pickle ball were exactly the same as in tennis, the only difference being the length of the racket. I had developed good hand-eye coordination prior to playing pickle ball, however, so this also contributed to the positive transfer. The gif below represents the level of ping pong I was able to play at on the first day of the unit.

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Ping Pong America GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

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Number 4: Practice can't make perfect without feedback

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Number 4: Practice can't make perfect without feedback

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I started hurdling in track when I was in 7th grade, but it wasn't until my Freshman year of high school that I started to receive augmented feedback about how I was doing at the task or how to improve. My coach in middle school would teach the basic movements and watch us practice, but never offered any words except good job. My coach in high school, however, took augmented feedback very seriously. Both KR and KP were used by my coach, Tracey. KP is the knowledge of performance and can be distributed through video, biofeedback, or verbally. KR is the knowledge or results. This is the information about the movement outcome and can be shared qualitatively or quantitatively. When I was starting high school track, I was already proficient at the skill of hurdling. As I began to work with Tracey, she would share descriptive verbal KP with me which was about what I did wrong in my movement. When I was a senior, Tracey tried to teach me how to 3-step in hurdling. This is taking only 3 steps between each hurdle instead of 4. Going from an even number of steps to odd was difficult because it changes the rhythm of the movement and means longer strides need to be taken. This was extremely difficult for me to learn. Through this process, Tracey would provide prescriptive verbal KP telling me how to correct the mistakes I was making. She also took video of me practicing so I could recognize what I was making mistakes as well. She would also provide qualitative KR making statements like, "You came too short over the hurdle which is why you couldn't make it to the next one in 3 steps." This would help me to recognize the specific movement I needed to change in order to become successful on the next trial. The picture below is during one of my 100 meter hurdle races from senior year when I started to 3-step instead of 4-step. I am the one in yellow. It represents the outcome to all of my coaches feedback during practice which made me successful.

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I have been a weight lifter for about 7 years now, and I enjoy a large variety of different exercises in this category. The anatomy and physiology behind what goes on as one lifts weights has also become an area of study I take part in continuously. It's fascinating to me how when isolating one muscle or a group of muscles to be stressed, so many others throughout the body become stabilizers to help in the movement. Feed-forward processes relate to the stabilization part of the movement, and is characterized by the brain sending a signal before the movement begins to prepare the body for the upcoming motor command and for the receipt of some type of feedback information. An example of this in weight lifting would be an experienced squatter. Protecting the spine and joints is essential during all types of movement, but especially when one is trying to add a lot of weight to the movement. When squatting with weights, using the core to brace and protect the spine and organs in the abdomen throughout the movement will provide safety, and proper execution of the motion. My body has been trained in proper technique for years, so when I prepare to squat, I experience feed forward control in my core. As I step back with the bar preparing for the squat, I run the movement quickly through my head and my brain sends a signal to my core to tighten. My thought process prepares my entire body for the upcoming movement and my core is ready before I even start the decent. If I didn't do this when lifting heavy loads, it could cause serious injury. Below is a video of myself performing a body weight squat to show the movement.

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When I was a Sophomore in high school, I made it to the WIAA division 1 state track meet in the 100M hurdles event. I was so excited and nervous at the same time because I would be competing against all of the best athletes in the state in front of a larger audience than I had ever experienced. As they called my heat to the starting line, I was trying to calm myself down by taking deep breaths and thinking about getting to the first hurdle as fast as possible. We got down into the blocks at the cue, "On your marks." On, "Get set" we all raised up onto our hands and toes. It felt like an eternity waiting for the sound of the gun, and my legs started to shake from anticipation. milliseconds before the sound of the gun I felt my balance shift too far forward and I lurched forward, hearing the gun right after started the race. I instantly knew I false started. The sound of the second gun went off, and I hung my head in shame knowing that was my only chance, you aren't allowed a second shot at state. Some said I choked, but after learning about choking in Kines 361, I know that I didn't. I hadn't changed my thought process or the way I normally complete the movement, what had happened was an issue with anticipation. There are two types of anticipation. Event/spatial is predicting what event will take place, while in temporal anticipation, the individual knows what is about to occur but is uncertain about the timing. The start in a track meet is a temporal anticipation situation, because the athletes know a gun will go off, they just don't know at exactly what time it will. That track season, we saw the same officials at almost every track meet. The problem with having them at most of the meets was that they blew the gun after the same amount of time every race. I had learned the fore-period timing and was able to anticipate the gun shot every time. At the state track meet, the officials had a much longer fore-period than I was used to which partly affected my start. I had been conditioned to a specific timing for the start of all my meets, and this one was different throwing off my anticipation. Below is a gif of a false start at the beginning of a race to represent the false start I did at State in 2013, because I couldn't find footage from the actual meet.

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I dabbled in softball for three summers throughout middle school and played on both a rec and club team. I played 3rd base mostly, and short-stop on occasions. I enjoyed the adrenaline rushes right before the batter would hit when I was in the field, as well as when I was up hitting. Our coaches were pretty innovative in our practice strategies, but the best aspect of practice they offered us was involving variability of practice. By definition, this is the variety of movement and context characteristics a person experiences while practicing a skill. With variability, there is contextual interference which is the memory and performance disruptions that result from practicing multiple skills or variations of a skill within the context of practice. There are different levels of contextual interference ranging from blocked to random practice. My coaches mostly used random repetitions of short blocks which has a moderate level of contextual interference. In this, we would never practice in the same exact order everyday, and we would go back to certain areas the team needed more work on later in practice. During activities such as grounding and pop-ups, our coach would use random practice by hiting balls to us in a random order, so we wouldn't know whether to expect a grounder, or a pop-up. We also didn't know exactly where it would be going to, because multiple of us would be out on the field. We'd also practice different scenarios that could be seen during a game with coaches on bases, and being instructed to get the ball hit from the coach to make an out. This helped us with the retention of the movements and plays, ultimately making our team better during games. Sometimes during practice we would think that we weren't performing very well, but during games, we out performed our opponents more often than not. The gif below is of a softball player missing an outfield catch, and the other team scoring a run. During games, our players often made runs because other teams weren't ready in the outfield to catch hit balls, so we scored most of our points this way.

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I played volleyball for three years during middle school. My main position on the team was to be the setter since I'm a shorter individual. One motor ability I needed for this was control precision. This is the ability to make highly controlled movement adjustments to visual stimuli, particularly when large muscle groups are involved. I used this ability in setting because I would need to watch the ball, and move my entire body to ensure I was directly under the ball as it came down to make the set. This movement would need to be controlled because I wouldn't have much time between the ball being passed by a team mate to me and me needing to be directly under the ball. Another ability used in this was  multi-limb coordination. This is the ability to coordinate the movement of a number of limbs simultaneously. In setting, you need to use both arms at the same time to make a good set, plus give a slight bend of the legs to put more power behind the set. In this movement, I was able to coordinate all four limbs at the same time. The gif below shows a set then a spike to represent the movement patterns I would take part in to make a set.

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World Championships Volleyball GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

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