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Learning Physical Skills
Learning to perform a complex physical action precisely is
really quite a complicated thing. It involves hundreds, or
even thousands, of muscle groups, each contracting and
relaxing at precisely the right moments. Each muscle
contracts in response to message from the brain, so the
different messages which are sent from the brain to the
muscles need to be highly co-ordinated if the movement is to
be exactly right.
When
a person is able to perform a complex skill
competently and consistently, he or she has achieved the
automation stage of the skills. That is the skill can be
carried out without conscious thinking, apart from the
decision to perform. This happens as the sequence of actions
becomes controlled by the part of the brain that
co-ordinates action, the celebellum, instead of being
controlled by this cerebrum, which is the part of the brain
that we think with. And as
such alcohols and drugs interfere with the messages from the
brain to the muscles, which is one reason why
high-performance sportspeople are refrained from. The other
reason, of course, is that it also interferes with how
efficiently we breathe, and with the amount oxygen that the
blood can carry.
The Learning Curve
of Complex skill
When we are learning something new, we generally take quite
a long time to do it successfully at first. But the more we
do it, the easier it becomes. Sometimes learning to perform
a new tennis stroke may fail entirely the first time they
attempt it. As they practice, though, they are likely to
succeed more and more often, until eventually they can do
successfully all the time – at least, while they are
practicing!
It’s the same with any other complex
physical skill. Someone who is learning to type will be very
slow at first, but will become faster as they become more
familiar with the positions of the letters on the keyboard.
If we were to plot their speed of typing on a chart,
measuring it against the amount of practice, we would find
that is made a curve which picked up very steeply at first,
and then rounded of more gently. And if we were to do the
same for with the practicing of the golf swing or tennis stroke, we’d find
that it, too, made the same curve. This is known as the
learning curve, and it show how we go about learning any
new skill.
Actually,
through, the basic learning curve is only the beginning. In
a complex sport or skill, we often experience several
different curves, with a leveling out between them. We
improve with practice a great deal at first, but then we hit
what is known as a plateau, where we don’t seem to get any
better for a while. But if we keep on working at it, then
eventually we begin to improve again. Most complex skills
involve plateau learning, because they actually
consist of many skill combined together, and it takes time
to master each one. It is also possible that the time spent
apparently not getting any better is useful because we
consolidate those skills we do have, and make sure they are
fully under control.
The
use of feedback
Another very important part of skill learning is feedback.
Feedback is all about knowing what we have done – knowledge
of results. If we didn’t get any feedback about the outcomes
of our actions, we wouldn’t be able to learn anything. You
couldn’t get better at darts if you were blindfolded, and
couldn’t see where the darts had landed on the board!
Instead, when playing darts, we use the outcome of our
action ‘throwing the first darts’ to help us to aim the
second one more accurately.
One of most important tasks of a sports coach is to provide
feedback. But the kind of feedback matters. Den Brinker et
al., in 1986 investigated how important feedback is when
learning to ski. They used a ski simulator, and asked people
to learn how make slalom-type movement while on the machine.
The researchers varied the kind of feedback, and found the
most useful types was when people were given feedback about
amplitude of their body movement – how much they swayed with
actions. They learned much faster from this than they did
when they given feedback about how often they moved, or how
smooth their movements were.
Mental training
Another aspect of complex skill learning that sport
psychologists have become very experienced in is that of
mental training. Mental training involves using the
imagination, in a carefully control way, to improve
performance. For example, Ainscore and Hardy developed a
training programme with gymnasts, in which they were asked
to practice their performance not just physically, but also
mentally - visualizing themselves going through each action
successfully and smoothly. They found that using this method
produced a noticeable improvement in how well the gymnast
learned.
Ainscore and Hardy weren’t the only psychologists to have
discovered this in 1983, Feltz and Landers reviewed 60
different studies of mental training of physical skills.
They came to the conclusion that this method was a useful
way of improving performance. Many sportspeople use
visualization as regular part of their practice, and find
that it doesn’t just help their physical learning, it also
helps their concentration.
Practice and automation
Any new skill requires practice – it won’t become a skill
until enough time and effort has been out into perfecting it
for it to have become virtually automatic. Some sports
psychologists have investigated whether it is better to have
long, concentrated session of practice, or whether it is
better to break them up into smaller chunks. The answer
seems to be somewhere between the two. Practice sessions
need to be long enough for the person to get some physical
control of the skill that they are working on, but it is
also important to have breaks. These don’t just give the
person a chance to rest: they also seem to help is to
consolidate the learning, physically, so that it comes more
easily the next time we try it.
Gruson (1988) looked at how skilled pianists practiced, and
compared that with lower grades. She found that the experts
went about their practicing in a different way from novices.
The experts, for instance, would spend much of time
practicing whole units. They wouldn’t ever repeat single
notes – if they made a mistake, they would repeat the whole
session. Novices, on the other hand, would repeat single
notes if they make a mistake, and this didn’t really help
them to learn the whole piece of music at all.
The implication, then, is that practicing whole units is
important for the development of fluent skills. If we wish
to produce a performance which is polished and continuous,
then we need to practise what we are doing in a way that is
also continuous. It’s obvious really, when we think about
it, but it’s surprising how many people don’t it.
This articles is referenced to the book Understand
Psychology by Dr. Nicky Hayes 2010
Philip Ang
Asian Golf Centre
Certified & Licensed
USGTF
Master Golf Teaching Professional - USA
Certified Professional Teacher and Trainer - University of
Cambridge UK
Singapore Sport Council - NCAP Level 1, 2 & 3
Singapore WDA-WSQ ACTA Certified Trainer & Assessor
Certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP™) Practitioner -
USA
Certified Professional Clubmaker by GCA (USA)
GCA Winner International Clubmaker of the Year - USA
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