Random Thoughts
Podcasts
Research
This paper explores the effects of practice conditions on motor learning, specifically looking at contextual interference and knowledge of results. Learning is related to information arising from performance, which should be prioritized during training/practice. The challenge point hypothesis is presented.
The warm-up for high level athletes needs to seen as more than just general ie raising body temperature, preparing tissues, increasing CNS – but rather as a chance to recalibrate fine motor skills
We all know that eliminating non-desirable behaviors can be difficult, even when there is a clear understanding that poor habits are detrimental. Athletes often know the benefits of diet, exercise, and drinking less alcohol, yet short-term bursts of enthusiasm are more common than long-term change. Academics in behavior change consistently report that efforts to change health behaviors, such as the ones mentioned, have had limited success.
Experienced coaches and sport scientists often represent the “front line” when it comes to promoting changes in an athlete’s behavior and positive habits. Unfortunately, change is often difficult; some athletes will resist change, as the effort required to change poor behaviors may not always seem to be worth it. Or, perhaps fear of the outcome stifles initiation and following through with desired changes.
Trying to get athletes to sleep more is a common example of trying to modify behavior to improve performance. Many will agree that sleep is a pleasant activity. Additionally, sleep researchers have revealed many benefits of consistent sleep for the athlete. The fact that most individuals actually like to sleep and complain when they do not get enough sleep suggests that it should not be difficult to get athletes to improve sleep behavior. However, athletes often obtain well below the general recommendation of 8 hours of sleep per night.
Potentially one of the hardest things to change is the use of electronic devices before bed. How do we get our athletes to limit or stop Instagram and Netflix time creeping into sleep time? How do we get athletes to prioritize sleep over “the fun stuff.”? Athletes can have knowledge and desire, but continue to miss out on what is good for them. We can know something and even believe that changing a behavior is important and yet still do nothing. Clearly, changing behavior is more complex than just common sense. If it were simple we would all make the changes we know we should make.
Behavioral modification has been theoretically discussed and applied by many. More recently, Bill Beswick (British sports psychologist) presented a model that discusses 3 drivers of behavioral change, credibility, reliability, and intimacy, all underpinned by trust.
In elite sport, credibility is crucial; on one hand there are the necessary qualifications to consider, and on the other hand, and perhaps even more important, is “street credibility,” which is typically related to the level of experience possessed by the sports scientist or coach. It is relatively easy to provide athletes with basic sleep information, but to be effective it can be important to consider issues such as late-night video games and caffeine use that are unique to the elite athlete. Sometimes “experts” in their fields cannot connect and engage with the athlete if they do not fully understand the athlete’s world. The second driver Beswick refers to is reliability. How many times have you heard a sport scientist promise to deliver a report or follow-up with the athlete, yet fail to deliver? If you are not reliable, athletes’ trust can be lost and athletes may not want to work with you. The third driver is intimacy, similar to emotional intelligence and reflecting how in tune you are with the athlete. How well do you listen, observe body language, and understand the athlete’s mood without even talking? Will the athlete open up to you about what may be interfering with his or her sleep or just lie and tell you everything is going fine? And, of course, many athletes may actually like sport science but not like the sport scientist they work with.
Current theories consider motor imagery, the mental representation of action, to have considerable functional overlap with the processes involved in actual movement preparation and execution. To test the neural specificity of motor imagery, we conducted a series of 3 experiments using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). We compared changes in corticospinal excitability as people prepared and implemented actual or imagined movements, using a delayed response task in which a cue indicated the forthcoming response. TMS pulses, used to elicit motor-evoked responses in the first dorsal interosseous muscle of the right hand, were applied before and after an imperative signal, allowing us to probe the state of excitability during movement preparation and implementation. Similar to previous work, excitability increased in the agonist muscle during the implementation of an actual or imagined movement. Interestingly, preparing an imagined movement engaged similar inhibitory processes as that observed during actual movement, although the degree of inhibition was less selective in the imagery conditions. These changes in corticospinal excitability were specific to actual/imagined movement preparation, as no modulation was observed when preparing and generating images of cued visual objects. Taken together, inhibition is a signature of how actions are prepared, whether they are imagined or actually executed.
Eight athletes performed sprints under three different weighted sled conditions – 1x50% body mass, 2x50% body mass, 3x50% body mass followed by unweighted sprints (15m) after 4,8,12 min rest. Significantly faster sprint times for 3x50% body mass protocol following 8min rest compared to 1x50%, 2x50%
A distinguishing factor explaining the capacities of professional athletes is their ability to learn how to process complex dynamic visual scenes.
Reactive strength and sprint acceleration are important for COD speed, but those qualities are not associated with defensive agility performance.
Unlike physical training, skill acquisition does not currently utilize periodization to plan, monitor and evaluate programs.
Motor learning is related to the information arising from performance. Authors look at practice variables such as skill level and task difficulty.
Game style was measured using 12 performance indicators. This analysis can highlight areas of concern in specific play periods or phases and help with organizing training drills and practice.
Aim of this paper is to describe some of the challenges faced by high-performance coaches and athletes who may wish tot use implicit motor learning to frame potential solutions with respects to Australian NRL.
Books
- Don’t water down the perception/information – Shawn Myszka
- It is unwise to pull the movement out of their respective equation – Shawn Myszka
- When trying to develop “technique” it needs to be done in open environment – never de-coupling a movement/action
- Manipulation of constraints can lead to successful development of motor patterns, decision-making
- Rather than just trying to mimic a movement pattern – place athletes in representative environment where they must discover appropriate movement solutions
- Performance is superior when perception–action is coupled. It is unwise to un-couple this process – Rob Gray
- We perceive in order to move and move in order to perceive – Shawn Myszka
- You need decision making before the technique – the process of learning a technique cannot interfere with the perception. The problem is we as coaches learn in the opposite - We learn technique/biomechanics, but omit the perception. Instead we should emphasize perception and build technique into the athlete’s perceptions.
- A skilled mover changes his or her movement based on their interaction/perception of the environment and task
- The essence of sport is movement – Bruce Lee
- Sports are really just a problem solving activity with our movements are used to solve those problems – Shawn Myszka
- Soccer has about 600 cuts in a game – Sophia Nimphius
- What is ideal agility mechanics? There is no consensus - I have found that what is perfect for one is not perfect for another though this is contrary to popular belief.
- We as S&C coaches should be sitting in on film meetings, meeting with coaches, etc
- The environment should be variable to have continuous changes so athletes have constantly make differing decisions
- Movement variation is a deviation from “norm” – so movement variability can be seen as the athlete searching for more an effective solution.
- Adding pressure/anxiety can quickly reveal movement dysfunction. When we don’t add pressure/anxiety to training, athletes will break down in competition
- What should/can coaches do
- Be more hands off
- Aim to facilitate
- Encourage exploration and creativity. Applaud failure
- Because of coaches incomplete knowledge of practice variables, they are often inefficient in their practice session
- Learning is a problem-solving process in which the goal of an action represents the problem to be solved and the evolution of a movement configuration represents the performer’s attempt to solve the problem.
- Sources of information available during and after each attempt to solve a problem are remembered and form the basis for learning
- Critical for learning – a) an action plan, b) feedback
- To increase learning, one must increase information
- Be aware of trying to fit an athlete into what we deem as an ideal technical model, fit your coaching to each athlete’s current model.
- I've found improving an athletes understanding of sport IQ, sport objectives, and sport flow improves movement strategies because the athlete now better understands the end goal, and with that in mind, they have a better understanding of more optimal solutions.
- The whiteboard initiates the process, practice develops it, and games mature it
- Sport movement is unnatural and continually evolving
- You only get so many live bullets, practice them
- We can’t only consider commands going from the brain to the body – efferent - Rob Gray
- We need to consider afferent commands – information coming from the body to the brain – Rob Gray
- You can’t take an action out of its context and only train movement. Athletes need to learn how to adapt movements using afferent information from the environment
- Behavioral decision-making is a complex, temporally extended process, and it makes little sense to consider a putative optimal decision prior to, or independently of, the behavioral expression of that decision during performance
- Perceptual-cognitive strategies are task dependent the time to perform an action and the accuracy of decisions are more consistent when performers are required to perceive to act than when they perceive to communicate – For example, athletes required to perform a sport action in comparison to when they were required to report a decision or judge a situation pressing a button
- Sports performance comprises two primary components; the ‘how’ (referring to technique), and ‘what’ (referring to tactics)
- An unanswered question in the literature is whether technical ability (how) affects the ability to make a decision (what)
- Perceptual-cognitive skill can be considered to be what one is able to perceive and understand; perceptual-motor skill refers to what one is able to perceive and do through movement
- Repeated exposure to a stimulus may produce stronger representations between the stimuli and associated performance
- The most prevalent method of assessing perceptual-cognitive skill in team sports has been to use video-based tests of decision-making ability where perception is uncoupled from an action. These essentially cognitive tasks result in an obvious reduction in ecological validity when comparing this to testing which takes place in-situ
- Totally conscious of not making errors can self-disrupt the most basic, fundamental skills by making the athlete aware of a skill they otherwise do subconsciously
- Coaches are often forced to sacrifice long-term cures for short-term fixes
- A coach should be aware of technical deficiencies in the skills of athletes but must find ways to correct deficiencies with minimum conscious awareness of the athlete
Podcasts
- Variability of Practiced Revisited – Perception-Action Podcast #91
- The Legacy of Nikolai Bernstein I – Problems in Movement Coordination
- The Legacy of Nikolai Bernstein II – Skill Acquisition Through Free(z)ing Degrees of Freedom
- Just Fly Podcast – Cody Plofker
- Just Fly Podcast – Justin Moore
- CVASP – Jeremy Frisch
- All Things Strength & Wellness – Nick Littlehales
- All Things Strength & Wellness – Fergus Connolly
- Radio Lab – Poop Train
- Joe Rogan Experience – Jordan Peterson
- Joe Rogan Experience – Danica Patrick
Research
- Guadagnoli, M. A., & Lee, T. D. (2004). Challenge point: a framework for conceptualizing the effects of various practice conditions in motor learning. Journal of motor behavior, 36(2), 212-224.
This paper explores the effects of practice conditions on motor learning, specifically looking at contextual interference and knowledge of results. Learning is related to information arising from performance, which should be prioritized during training/practice. The challenge point hypothesis is presented.
- Ajemian, R., D’Ausilio, A., Moorman, H., & Bizzi, E. (2010). Why professional athletes need a prolonged period of warm-up and other peculiarities of human motor learning. Journal of motor behavior, 42(6), 381-388.
The warm-up for high level athletes needs to seen as more than just general ie raising body temperature, preparing tissues, increasing CNS – but rather as a chance to recalibrate fine motor skills
- Amazing Athletes With Ordinary Habits: Why Is Changing Behavior So Difficult?."International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 12(10), pp. 1273–1274
We all know that eliminating non-desirable behaviors can be difficult, even when there is a clear understanding that poor habits are detrimental. Athletes often know the benefits of diet, exercise, and drinking less alcohol, yet short-term bursts of enthusiasm are more common than long-term change. Academics in behavior change consistently report that efforts to change health behaviors, such as the ones mentioned, have had limited success.
Experienced coaches and sport scientists often represent the “front line” when it comes to promoting changes in an athlete’s behavior and positive habits. Unfortunately, change is often difficult; some athletes will resist change, as the effort required to change poor behaviors may not always seem to be worth it. Or, perhaps fear of the outcome stifles initiation and following through with desired changes.
Trying to get athletes to sleep more is a common example of trying to modify behavior to improve performance. Many will agree that sleep is a pleasant activity. Additionally, sleep researchers have revealed many benefits of consistent sleep for the athlete. The fact that most individuals actually like to sleep and complain when they do not get enough sleep suggests that it should not be difficult to get athletes to improve sleep behavior. However, athletes often obtain well below the general recommendation of 8 hours of sleep per night.
Potentially one of the hardest things to change is the use of electronic devices before bed. How do we get our athletes to limit or stop Instagram and Netflix time creeping into sleep time? How do we get athletes to prioritize sleep over “the fun stuff.”? Athletes can have knowledge and desire, but continue to miss out on what is good for them. We can know something and even believe that changing a behavior is important and yet still do nothing. Clearly, changing behavior is more complex than just common sense. If it were simple we would all make the changes we know we should make.
Behavioral modification has been theoretically discussed and applied by many. More recently, Bill Beswick (British sports psychologist) presented a model that discusses 3 drivers of behavioral change, credibility, reliability, and intimacy, all underpinned by trust.
In elite sport, credibility is crucial; on one hand there are the necessary qualifications to consider, and on the other hand, and perhaps even more important, is “street credibility,” which is typically related to the level of experience possessed by the sports scientist or coach. It is relatively easy to provide athletes with basic sleep information, but to be effective it can be important to consider issues such as late-night video games and caffeine use that are unique to the elite athlete. Sometimes “experts” in their fields cannot connect and engage with the athlete if they do not fully understand the athlete’s world. The second driver Beswick refers to is reliability. How many times have you heard a sport scientist promise to deliver a report or follow-up with the athlete, yet fail to deliver? If you are not reliable, athletes’ trust can be lost and athletes may not want to work with you. The third driver is intimacy, similar to emotional intelligence and reflecting how in tune you are with the athlete. How well do you listen, observe body language, and understand the athlete’s mood without even talking? Will the athlete open up to you about what may be interfering with his or her sleep or just lie and tell you everything is going fine? And, of course, many athletes may actually like sport science but not like the sport scientist they work with.
- Florent Lebon, Célia Ruffino, Ian Greenhouse, Ludovica Labruna, Richard B Ivry, Charalambos Papaxanthis; The Neural Specificity of Movement Preparation During Actual and Imagined Movements, Cerebral Cortex
Current theories consider motor imagery, the mental representation of action, to have considerable functional overlap with the processes involved in actual movement preparation and execution. To test the neural specificity of motor imagery, we conducted a series of 3 experiments using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). We compared changes in corticospinal excitability as people prepared and implemented actual or imagined movements, using a delayed response task in which a cue indicated the forthcoming response. TMS pulses, used to elicit motor-evoked responses in the first dorsal interosseous muscle of the right hand, were applied before and after an imperative signal, allowing us to probe the state of excitability during movement preparation and implementation. Similar to previous work, excitability increased in the agonist muscle during the implementation of an actual or imagined movement. Interestingly, preparing an imagined movement engaged similar inhibitory processes as that observed during actual movement, although the degree of inhibition was less selective in the imagery conditions. These changes in corticospinal excitability were specific to actual/imagined movement preparation, as no modulation was observed when preparing and generating images of cued visual objects. Taken together, inhibition is a signature of how actions are prepared, whether they are imagined or actually executed.
- Jarvis, P., Turner, A., Chavda, S., & Bishop, C. (2017). The acute effects of heavy sled towing on subsequent sprint acceleration performance. Journal of Trainology, 6(1), 18-25.
Eight athletes performed sprints under three different weighted sled conditions – 1x50% body mass, 2x50% body mass, 3x50% body mass followed by unweighted sprints (15m) after 4,8,12 min rest. Significantly faster sprint times for 3x50% body mass protocol following 8min rest compared to 1x50%, 2x50%
- Faubert, J. (2013). Professional athletes have extraordinary skills for rapidly learning complex and neutral dynamic visual scenes. Scientific reports, 3, 1154.
A distinguishing factor explaining the capacities of professional athletes is their ability to learn how to process complex dynamic visual scenes.
- Young, W. B., Miller, I. R., & Talpey, S. W. (2015). Physical qualities predict change-of-direction speed but not defensive agility in Australian rules football. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 29(1), 206-212.
Reactive strength and sprint acceleration are important for COD speed, but those qualities are not associated with defensive agility performance.
- Farrow, D., & Robertson, S. (2017). Development of a skill acquisition periodisation framework for high-performance sport. Sports Medicine, 47(6), 1043-1054.
Unlike physical training, skill acquisition does not currently utilize periodization to plan, monitor and evaluate programs.
- Guadagnoli, M. A., & Lee, T. D. (2004). Challenge point: a framework for conceptualizing the effects of various practice conditions in motor learning. Journal of motor behavior, 36(2), 212-224.
Motor learning is related to the information arising from performance. Authors look at practice variables such as skill level and task difficulty.
- Greenham, G., Hewitt, A., & Norton, K. (2017). A pilot study to measure game style within Australian football. International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, 17(4), 576-585.
Game style was measured using 12 performance indicators. This analysis can highlight areas of concern in specific play periods or phases and help with organizing training drills and practice.
- Gabbett, T., & Masters, R. (2011). Challenges and solutions when applying implicit motor learning theory in a high performance sport environment: Examples from Rugby League. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching,6(4), 567-575.
Aim of this paper is to describe some of the challenges faced by high-performance coaches and athletes who may wish tot use implicit motor learning to frame potential solutions with respects to Australian NRL.
Books
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