Kinesthetic memory (muscle memory) is a frequently-used term to describe the learning of motor skills, whether they are related to sports, music, or everyday activity (Farrow, 2013). With a lot of intense practice and mental concentration, we can teach our muscles to repeat certain movements on a subconscious level (Morley, 2013). Learning to perform a motor skill quickly and efficiently occurs in three stages. These three stages are:
1. Cognitive stage: Full attention to the motor task is required as we identify the skill and focus on how to do it.
2. Associative stage: we understand how the skill is done and can begin to practice it.
3. Autonomous stage: we can perform the skill automatically without conscious thought. (DNA Sports Performance, 2013).
As we hone a motor skill through these three stages, which we call the understanding stage, the practicing stage, and the knowing stage, performance of the motor movement transfers from the conscious control of the cerebral cortex to the subconscious control of the cerebellum.
In basketball, kinesthetic memory is achieved over time by repeatedly practicing a shot. A beginning player concentrates hard on understanding how to make fingers, hands, arms, and legs move exactly right based on what is seen. With repeated practice, the “seeing-thinking-doing” gradually becomes “seeing-doing” because the muscles seem to “know” and “remember” just what to do (Simlog, 2013) in order to sink the shot.
Muscle memory holds a player in good stead when there is no performance pressure and no need to consciously think about the shot. However, when shooting under pressure, many players become conscious of their effort to take the perfect shot. The shift from subconscious control of the muscle ...
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Preoperational stage (ages 2-7) – Concrete physical stimuli are needed in order for a child to develop new concepts.
While excelling as an inexperience basketball player, I was taught the improper mechanics and incorrect techniques on learning to shoot an appropriate jump shot. Following in my basketball career I developed as a shooting guard, leading to me being criticized for being a two-handed shooter. While blooming as an athlete and player, my college coach pointed out my distant actions and from then I grew interested in learning the research behind the mechanics I do when performing a jump shot. Because I got the opportunity...
Basketball is a "transition game. Players continuously switch between defensive and offensive plays throughout the game. The plays include strenuous physical, such as running/sprinting, cutting, feints, jumps, and landings. Rapid turns and proximity during one-on-one situations increase the possibility of physical contact. Thus, frequent intermittent running and sprinting characterize the action of the game. Motion analysis has shown that depending on individual playing-time; basketball players cover a distance between 4.6 and 5.8 km per game, with mean heart rates between 80 and 90% of individual maximum heart rates (European Network for Sports injuries prevention, 2008). Consequently, players need to rid of highly advanced basic...
Pressure is placed on athletes to perform better. The fierce competitive nature of the real sports world in with the peoples excellence has caused athletes to seek alternative means to ...
In the first stage, sensorimotor, the child starts to build an understanding of its world by synchronising sensory encounters with physical actions. They become capable of symbolic thought and start to achieve object permanence.
Motor skills are motions carried out when the brain, nervous system, and muscles work together. The body must effectively use mind/body connection and awareness of their surroundings for the muscles and bones to develop fine and gross motor skills. Both of these motor skills start out as reflexes, the body has not learned them but they are uncontrollable movements. That is then later learned and perfected making large and...
The last stage is the beginning of the symbolic presentation. Children's imagination roams free, and they begin to understand the world through mental imagery and free play rather than the pure action of
Visualisation is the most common and effective technique used within mental imagery in sport (Harmison, 2011). To do this you envision yourself executing physical sequences of the sport (Harmison, 2011). It has been shown that visualization helps the athlete to perform at a higher level, through increasing traits of the ‘ideal mentality’. In the process of visualization your must imagine correctly and successfully all aspect of the motion, going through frame-by-frame and using all senses. Studies looking into visualization have shown that mental practice can increase real strength and performance creating an almost virtual iron aspect. This study by ( ) has also proven that visualization activates the same neural circuits that actual seeing does, visual imagery activates the brains visual cortex therefore through the imagining of movement it actives the motor ...
Suinn, R. M., & Clayton, R. D. (1980).Psychology in sports: methods and applications. Minneapolis, Minn.: Burgess Pub. Co..
Biomechanics has been around for a long time but in last twenty years technology have blown up so much that we have been able to take it another level. Equipment that we think is so simple now a days like a high-speed camera or a cell can now be used to record and track date. My first sport to ever play was basketball; it was my first love when it came to sports. In basketball there are a few was to score a basket. First one is the lay, second one which most people can’t do is dunk it in and last but not least is to shoot it in. For this assignment I will be going over how to shoot a basketball.
...-related target words. For example, Movement-the-smooth-was-could (the movement was smooth), the hockey players who were highly skilled, showed faster and more accurate dribbling performance following priming compared to both a skill-focused condition and a high pressured condition. (Masters, 144) “One implication of these findings is that priming potentially can be exploited be coaches to provide specific instructions of which performers are not consciously aware” (Masters, 144). Which directly ties the priming effect back to the effects of implicit memory in motor skill learning with implicit instruction can increase the performance in an athlete.
The second stage was titled the preoperational stage. From the age of 2 through the age of 7, the mind of the child increases substantially toward developing the mental construction of familiar and regular objects which the child interacts with frequently. The concepts of such objects are only at surface level, meaning how the child has yet to comprehend the complexity of these objects. Furthermore, the child may automatically assume how their environment (namely, those around the child) shares their likes and dislikes. (DeWolfe,
The cognitive development perspective focuses on how children construct knowledge and how their constructions change over time. Piaget believed that children naturally try to make sense of their world, by engaging, touching, sucking, listening, and looking. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development was inspired by observing his own kids, and how they interacted with their surroundings. Piaget describes four major stages of cognitive development. Each stage represents a change in children and how they learn and understand their environment around them. It begins at birth until about 2 years of age. It is based on sense and motor skills. And how well they physically interact with their surroundings. Motor skills can be defined as anything that requires an infant to use their muscles, such as
The Dynamic theory is the nervous system that is considered part of the developing motor system, the Nervous System must dynamically change and interact with other systems to achieve co-ordinated movement (Kamm, Thelen and Jenson, 1990). There are four stages of Motor Development which are shared with the Dynamic Theory such as reflex, ru...
The Olympic Games bring together individuals that are exceptional and impeccably dominant within their particular concentration of training and athletics. Olympic Games have an array of events and/or sports that range from individual to team competitions, and are either sport related activities or are combat related, such as fencing. Fencing is the sport of sword fighting, which was first known to be organized in 14th century Germany with heavier and larger swords, but fencing has evolved into utilizing a lighter sword for fencers to move much quicker in combat, competition and now a recreational sport (Slade, 2009). The sport of fencing is a combat sport that requires skillfulness that is primarily done in an indoors setting, where two athletes skirmish indirectly through the use of sword, and physical interaction is prohibited (Rio & Bianchedi, 2008). The swords used in fencing are the Sabre, Epee, and Foil, and the weapon in which the fencer is expected to use is centered on what they were interested in at the beginning of training or what the local club deals within, or maybe be due to what the coach specializes in (Turner et al., 2013). This sport prominently demands anaerobic drive within the fencers to produce high velocity action that are dynamic in nature and require a vast amount of articulation of joints and muscle force generation. Mental acuity factors are also crucial within fencing from mental preparation to tactical action conducted within the event to gain the upper hand (Chang, Regatte, & Schweitzer, 2009). Fencing is a mental and physical game; competitors must constantly anticipate their opponent’s mov...