https://padlet.com/97shorty/gvjdl9m0v1fq This padlet connects several topics from Kines 361 to my life growing up on the farm and playing sports. en-us 2017-12-14 03:21:56 UTC 2026-01-18 02:58:18 UTC hello@padlet.com 97shorty https://padlet.com/97shorty/gvjdl9m0v1fq/wish/216033844 Growing up on a large crop farm gave me a childhood unlike many others. I was driving large 8-wheel tractors down the road and in the field before I turned 10 years old. So driving my first semi with a 40' trailer at age 17 is a little more understandable. It was a 1985 Mack Superliner with an 18-speed transmission. I spent the whole summer in that truck hauling silage, cow manure, and anything we hooked to the back of it.  I got good enough at it, that I could shift through all 18 gears without using the clutch. It was much faster and easier on my left leg to not use the clutch - especially when we hauled over 75 hours a week. However, I got a nasty dose of reality and negative transfer when I jumped back in my manual transmission car at the end of the summer to go back to school. I had forgotten how to drive it seemed! I kept trying to shift past 5th gear and not use the clutch. I was met with lots of grinding, an unhappy transmission, and a few choice words. It seemed that as soon as I stopped consciously thinking about shifting, I would revert to my old timing structure and coordination patterns due to the change in spatial location of the car's transmission. Eventually I overcame this negative transfer, but at the price of damage to my transmission and ridicule from my friends.

This is a nice "informative" video of how to properly drive a manual car that you should definitely check out. He highlights the importance of using a clutch with a car transmission that has syncros in it. If car transmissions were built with the same spatial location and flywheel styles of a large semi, then I would not have experienced such cognitive confusion. ]]> 2017-12-14 03:26:33 UTC https://padlet.com/97shorty/gvjdl9m0v1fq/wish/216033844 97shorty https://padlet.com/97shorty/gvjdl9m0v1fq/wish/216035453 In high school, I was painfully mediocre. At 5'11" 150lbs I wasn't much of a show stopper in footbalI and I was too lanky to overpower anyone on the wrestling mat. I didn't have the explosiveness of a sprinter or the endurance of a XC runner so how in the world could I excel in the sports arena? Mastering skills to overcome ability deficiency definitely helps. Let's take my football career as an example. During my time on varsity, I played the strong safety position. Because I didn't have the natural ability of height to my advantage, I had to lift heavy and do tons of jump box exercises to build the fast twitch leg muscles that would let me increase my jump skills to get up over wide receivers to knock down passes. But let's be honest, its high school ball. I was mainly a run stop safety that filled holes from 8 yards back. Because I couldn't change my size (ability) with practice, I had to master the opposing team's offense by studying film. In this way, I increased my skill of reading the offense and knowing where the ball was most likely going to end up so I could get to that location at the same time. Through practice and experience, I was able to increase my skill level to compensate for my lack of natural ability. But now that I made it to the right spot at the right time, how was I going to stop Campbellsport's 6'2" 250lb fullback? Get lower than him... And do my best not to be scared. 

Here is Patrick Willis showing us how low man wins (He definitely has the ability of size on his side) His effectiveness in reading the offense and meeting the running back in the hole was a skill he had to practice in order to be successful. His natural ability of being tall (and strong to a degree) would be useless if he couldn't hone his defensive skills through practice. ]]> 2017-12-14 03:47:18 UTC https://padlet.com/97shorty/gvjdl9m0v1fq/wish/216035453 97shorty https://padlet.com/97shorty/gvjdl9m0v1fq/wish/216037509 Because I didn't overtly excel at distance or open sprint events, I decided to enter in hurdle events in hopes that the obstacles would slow down my opponents more than me. However, I suffered from shin splints during my senior season so I had to race my buddy by running next to the track on a grass lane in attempts of minimizing the impacts of our asphalt track. During hurdle practice he would beat me six ways 'til Sunday. But the adaptability of motor learning helped me when we would race each other at meets on a rubberized track with spikes. After shifting to a novel physical environment, I was able to outperform him on most occasions. I was able to apply what I had learned running on the grass more effectively than what he had learned running on asphalt. 

Here is a picture of me in the center over the hurdle with my buddy two lanes to my left. Because of my increased adaptability, a common running surface revealed that I was indeed faster than him during this race. ]]> 2017-12-14 04:15:29 UTC https://padlet.com/97shorty/gvjdl9m0v1fq/wish/216037509 97shorty https://padlet.com/97shorty/gvjdl9m0v1fq/wish/216037931 Spending all these hours in a tractor seat gives a lot of time to reflect (and talk to myself). During my senior year, I had elbow surgery after finishing my football season. This prevented me from starting wrestling when the season opened. However, I could still work on the farm so while I was driving in the field, I would intensely review two wrestling moves. The first move was a take-down and the other was an escape move. I believed that I could mentally practice these two moves so extensively that I would be able to jump right back in when I was cleared to start wrestling again. It wasn't a perfect transition when I finally came back to wrestling, but I had the ability to perform these to moves successfully against any of my teammates. My commitment to active cognitive rehearsal of these two moves had helped me perform some already well-learned skills. Even though I wasn't able to physically practice the moves, I had increased my success in performance by working out the cognitive information related to these moves.

Here is a picture from my first match back after my surgery after I successfully executed the take-down that I had practiced mentally.]]> 2017-12-14 04:21:07 UTC https://padlet.com/97shorty/gvjdl9m0v1fq/wish/216037931 97shorty https://padlet.com/97shorty/gvjdl9m0v1fq/wish/216037976 If I wasn't driving the semi during the summer, I was running the merger during hay crop. The merger is a large machine that has teeth to pickup the hay that was cut, throw it onto a belt, and feed it out to one side to form a large windrow of hay. The nature of harvesting hay requires that I run the merger twice as far (down the field and back to form 1 large row) as the Chopper (The machine that finely chops the row into a semi to be hauled away). This meant that I had to push the tractor to its limits in order to stay ahead. Unfortunately my boss wasn't receptive of my explanation of Fitt's Speed and Accuracy tradeoff. I found that the faster I operated the machine, the more hay it left on the ground due to the teeth not picking up the hay accurately. My boss didn't like leaving hay on the ground so I had to slow down to be more accurate. However, then the chopper would catch up to me and cause semis to have to wait int the field. So I was told to go faster to stay ahead. It caused a lot of stressful times that made me wish I could maximize speed and accuracy without sacrificing one or the other. 

This is a picture of the machine that I run. It is 35' wide and you can see the teeth picking up the hay. If I drove too fast, these teeth couldn't pick all the hay up and would roll it under the machine to be left in the field. Slowing down solved this accuracy problem, but cost the boss valuable time and money in wages.

]]> 2017-12-14 04:21:55 UTC https://padlet.com/97shorty/gvjdl9m0v1fq/wish/216037976