Enhancing Movement Flashcards
What are factors influencing movement quality?
- Physiology
- Practice/training
- Biomechanics
- Technology
- Nutrition
- Psychology
How does practice affect our motor learning?
- As we practice, we learn to move more effectively and more efficiently
- Reflects changes in perceptual, cognitive and action capability
Is controlling your movement a simple task?
No, it seems easy but its a very complex process on many levels. This is one of the reasons it takes so long for us to learn skills
What is neuroplasticity?
The brain’s ability to change continuously throughout the life span eg.
- Brain activity for a certain function can be transferred to a different location
- The proportion of grey matter can change
- Synapses may strengthen or weaken over time “use it or lose it” (Hebbian Theory)
What are the 4 factors of experience-dependent plasticity?
- Synaptic pruning (pulling apart the synapses)
- Long-term potentiation
- Selective inhibition
- Myelination
What is skill automaticity?
Achieved when performance of a primary task is minimally effected by other ongoing tasks. Allows us to perform it almost automatically without thinking
Why is it important to set the right difficulty level when practicing?
- Shouldn’t be too easy or too hard
- Try to make the practice more difficult then it would be in a game
What is contextual interference?
Interfering to make the performance not so good and make errors. But the flip side is that you learn more so it actually is beneficial to skill learning
What is deliberate practice?
The practice that is solely for improving performance, not necessarily fun and is often with a coach
What is deliberate play?
Practice for fun that is often unsupervised
To become successful in sport, do you need to specialise early?
There are multiple pathways for achieving your goals and becoming an expert so it’s not necessarily important to specialise early.
What are the different types of practice?
- Easy : Hard
- Massed : Distributed
- Constant : variable
- Blocked : Random
- Part : Whole
- Guided : Discovery
- Mental : Physical
What is ‘brain-washing’?
- What you do after practice influences learning effectiveness
- Emerging research field suggesting that sleep soon after practice helps learning
What are explicit (conscious) ways for coaches to modify technique?
- Instruction
- Feedback
- Demonstration
What are implicit (sub-conscious) ways for coaches to modify technique?
- Analogy
- Problem-solving
- Variable practice
- dual-tasking
Is the problem of physical inactivity to do with education?
No
- People know the importance of being PA
- The problem is that when people start being active, they stop and relapse which usually happens within 6 months of starting
Enhancing movement for performance =
getting people to do it (behaviour change)
Myth: Education leads to behaviour change
Truth: Changing our behaviours to adopt and maintain PA is complicated. Trying to convince people of its importance isn’t enough
What is motivation?
Anything that impels a person to action. Motivation is crucial since exercise is a voluntary activity
How can we demonstrate motivation?
Through the intensity and direction of behaviour
- Intensity example: going for a run even though its raining
- Direction example: choosing to go to the gym instead of the pub
What are outcome expectations?
What can be achieved? - the reasons for exercising, important for getting people started
What are proximal outcomes of PA?
- Things we experience during and shortly afterwards
- Keeps us motivated from day to day
- Less likely to be recognised
What are distal outcomes of PA?
- Can be achieved through regular exercise but takes days or months
- Ranked more important
- Aspirational - longer term motivation
Relationship between proximal and distal motivation?
We need the proximal motivation to achieve those distal outcomes
What is outcome realisation?
What has been achieved? - realising that the goals have or haven’t been achieved
What are pessimistic realists?
Low expectations and low experienced outcomes
What are surprised pessimists?
Low expectations and high experienced outcomes (highest PA participation)
What are disappointed optimists?
High expectations and low experienced outcomes (Lowest PA participation)
What are optimistic realists?
High expectations and high experienced outcomes (Highest PA participation)
Myth: more motivation is better
Truth: the quality of motivation is more important
What is autonomous motivation?
Exercising because its fun and you want to. Physical activity adherence and positive psych well-being
What is controlled motivation?
Exercising because you’ve been told to and will feel guilty if you don’t. Short term adoption of physical activity but negative psych well-being
How can you create autonomous motivation?
- Help them feel involved (decrease the pressure): in their programme design, realising the importance and in setting goals
- Help them feel a sense of connection to the exercise environment
- Help them release they can do it (increase confidence)
What are the 3 main ways to build confidence?
- Create accomplishments so people learn what they can achieve (“I did it before, I can do it again”) - goal setting, recognising achievements/outcomes
- Provide supportive feedback that reinforces achievements (“I can do it because you told me I can”) - you walked 1km longer than last week
- Create situations where people can see others being successful (“If he can do it, so can I”) - exercise groups
Myth: People can meet the PA guidelines if they really waned to
Truth: Behaviour change is complicated
What is affect?
Affect is a general overview of how we feel, taking into account our moods and emotions
What is affective response?
How we feel as a result of a stimulus (exercise)
What is negative affect?
Feeling bad, generally feeling bleugh
What is positive affect?
Feeling great, generally feeling awesome
Why does affect matter?
- It’s a component of psychological wellbeing.
- It has a motivational force; people choose to do things that make them feel good and avoid things that don’t
What’s the process of an exercise decision?
Affect response –> affective memory –> affective forecast –> exercise decision
What has the strongest influence on how we feel during exercise?
Exercise Intensity - There is no universal exercise intensity that will produce the most positive affect during exercise in all individuals
What is the importance of cognitive appraisal?
- People will self select a physiological beneficial intensity which results in a more positive affective response
- At high intensities, physiological symptoms dominate over psychological factors and make us feel horrible
Does exercise have to hurt to be worthwhile?
No
What are accelerometers?
Measures linear acceleration, often along three axes, used in your phone, activity trackers and IMU devices
What are gyroscopes?
Measures rate of rotation (angular velocity) of device, used in smartphones and IMU devices
What is electrocardiography?
Recording of heart’s electrical activity, voltage measured through electrodes
What is heart rate?
- HR is average number of beats per min
- HR is a frequency
- HR by beat: f = 1/time
What is vagal tone?
- Activity of the vagus nerve and it decreases on inhale and increases on exhale
- Causes HR and R-peak amplitude increase on inhale and decrease on exhale
What is heart rate variabilty?
HR variability at rest indicates healthy exchange between SNS and PSNS
What is photoplethysmography (PPG)?
- Light reflects off skin and measured by sensor
- HR inferred from blood flow through measured region
- Indirect measure of HR, blood oxygen saturation
- Found in smart watches/rings - estimate HR during normal activity, exercise and sleep
- Not accurate during exercise, need to wear a chest strap with electrodes
What are applications of ‘in the wild’ training monitoring?
- Synchronisation of physiological and biomechanical systems
- By-step and by-heartbeat metrics
What is markerless motion capture?
- Full body 3D model from smartphone/tablet
- Neural networks trained on location of body landmarks
- Not fully portable
- Drastically cuts cost and time required for motion analysis
- Accurate to within 4degrees for sagittal plane movement
How to estimate energy expenditure through step counting?
- Some pedometers use a circuit that opens and closes when titled
- Most use accelerometers
- Steps are intuitive, fundamental unit of human locomotion
- Steps only one (small) component of daily energy use
- Many estimate HR via PPG
What are the pros of wearables?
- Give a reasonable good indication of activity
- Can be used to monitor activity
- Can increase activity in sedentary
- Can be motivating
- Being active tends to influence other good habits
What are the cons of wearables?
- Can be expensive
- Can lead to extrinsic motivation
- Setting activity goals can be gamed
- Goals not validated
- Beholden to device
What are the different types of sport classification?
- Track and field/racing
- Invasion Games
- Net/wall games
- Batting games
- Target games
- Aesthetic orientated
What is technique analysis?
- An application of biomechanics
- Practically orientated
- Usually done in the field
- Traditionally involves qualitative analysis with basic equipment
What is technique analysis technology?
- Mainly video footage that is analysed
- Sensors and markerless motion capture becoming more common
- Practicalities: time and money
What is the workflow of the technique analyst?
- Develop a model of the movement or game
- Model should simplify movement but retain the important features
- Decide on the goals/focus of the analysis
- Observe and evaluate the movement
What is notional analysis?
- An objective method of describing and recording game events
- Can be done live or using video recordings
- Done by hand or with software packages
- Player tracking technology becoming more common
- Video linked to events
What is workload analysis?
- Has become popular with introduction of GPS systems
- Volume and intensity of activity of interest
How is super rugby analysed?
- Notational analysis and GPS tracking combined
- Contacts notated from video
- Locomotion tracked with GPS
- Does physical training relate to on-field performance?
How is snow sport analysed?
- Athletes wear IMU devices
- Events are detected
- Workload and preparation is monitored by PTA
