About a month ago I posted a very short excerpt from a book I had just completed titled "How We Learn to Move" by skill acquisition specialist Rob Gray and now with some AFLW winding down I can finally start posting the numerous noted I took from it.
I'm sure you'll get plenty our of the notes on their own but if you don't have a decent background in this theory of movement, then I strongly suggest you get your hands on the actual book.
Here's part 4 of 97 book notes and over 4300 words in this series.
CHAPTER 8 – NEW WAYS OF COACHING 2: DIFFERENTIAL LEARNING
Differential learning shares some similarities with CLA with goals of destabilising the existing movement solutions/attractors, promoting exploration, self organisation and creating variability in movement execution but in different ways.
Every player has their own level of inherent variability (specifics in the same movement) and these differences can be attributed to differences in the intrinsic dynamics as each of our own perceptual-motor landscapes has different layouts, with deeper and shallower attractors, but this variability is good as it reflects adaptation to changing constraints.
In differential learning, we are trying to enhance the good while reducing the bad (more noise) with the primary goal being to add fluctuations in movement on top of the performer’s inherent variability with the intent of increasing the strength of the signal (the movement solution) – pulling out the signal from the noise by adding more noise.
The key characteristics of differential learning is to add random variability to the practice environment to promote stochastic resonance, perturb the system by NOT getting the athlete to move in practice as they will move in a game, allowing the performer to gain information about the solution space that can be used in future performances and by creating the optimal level of noise for the individual athlete.
By initially teaching skills by dribbling around cones, hitting off tee’s etc, we are purposefully reducing the variability and removing things like decision-making because the correct technique is best established through low variability and repeatable conditions, but only 1 technique is developed when we now know we need an endless supply of techniques to solve all the problems that games throw at us. To achieve this, we want to introduce variability right at the beginning of training to encourage exploration of the perceptual-motor landscape and learning to solve movement problems.
CHAPTER 9 – GOOD vs BAD VARIABILITY, OPTIMAL MOVEMENT SOLUTIONS AND EFFECTIVE SELF ORGANISATION
Freezing degrees of freedom refers to taking some bodyparts out of the equation by not moving them at all or by coupling two different body parts so that they move together which at least gives you some proficiency to at least start playing the game, but it also removes links such as your stance leg pushing hard into the ground as you kick resulting in further distance and velocity. It is also not very adaptable and not very resilient to external factors such as opposition.
Freezing is only the first part of Bernstein's skill development model, which is followed by freeing which is where the athlete gradually lifts any restrictions they have placed on their movement which presents as more fluidity of movement (a less-robot-like kicking action for example).
The third part is the search for optimality which involves the performer finding the optimal movement solution for that specific scenario.
Dexterity is not confined within the movements of actions themselves but is revealed in how these movements behave in their interaction with the environment, unexpectedness and surprise.
Optimality requires that we move our body parts in a manner such that they work together in synergy.
A motor synergy is a movement solution for which there is functional co-variation between the degrees of freedom that serves to stabilise the performance outcome (having to perform your handball action around an opponent and the more joint degrees of freedom you need to do).
Motor synergies cannot possibly occur if we just reel off a pre-programmed movement stored in our head after hours and hours of repetition.
Becoming skillful should involve a relative increase in good variability and a decrease in bad variability with practice.
He ran a study where baseball batters had a relatively large amount of inherent variability in the timing of the swing which in turn was associated with poor performance – not hitting the ball very often. In the study this wasn’t remedied by eliminating all variability and producing a highly repeatable swing but by the batters restructuring variability – increasing the amount of good and moving away from bad variability.
CHAPTER 10 – A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE
The Fosbury flop in the high jump came about when they changed the landing surface from sand at floor level to a crash mat at mid thigh level (task constraint), enabling jumpers to explore jumping over the bar in different ways but inspired far more by the task constraint then creativity.
Creativity arises from a symmetrical, coupled interaction between the individual, task and environmental constraints faced by the performer.
Creative solutions are not ideas but emerge when a performer acting and searching for solutions to satisfy the constraints of a task.
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