What’s the best way to use my brain to develop physical skills?

Definition

Physical skills are the use of my body only (like climbing or playing soccer) or the use of a combination of my body and tools (like playing guitar or surfing) to generate results.

My goals for developing skills are to build memories and identify the best control points for practice and performance.

Memories store relationships between sensations. Muscle memories are movements directly linked to cues that don’t require conscious energy to initiate. Muscle memories link together the sensations between cues, movements and results. With muscle memories, the movements can be initiated from either direction – movement can be triggered by a cue or the need for a required result.

Control points are focus points for the conscious. Control points to enhance development are different than control points to enhance performance. During practice, I’m using conscious control to emphasize the sensations of specific cues for the movements I’m working on. During performance, I’m using my conscious control to focus my attention where it provides the most useful information for the habits I’ve already developed. Focus points will change over time. As my proficiency increases, different moves will be required and I’ll handle information differently (I’ll be aware of more sensations and have a better understanding of which sensations are significant). As I learn more, I’ll need to adjust where I am using conscious control to direct attention. The only time I am using conscious control to direct movement is in the very early stages of learning a new move.

Building skills take time. Progress from beginner to advanced happens in three overlapping phases:

Overload. As a beginner I don’t know what information to pay attention to and I don’t have the cognitive capacity to consciously control all the body movements necessary to perform the required tasks at the required speed.

Awareness. As I gain exposure to a new skill, I begin to develop an understanding of what information is important and I begin to develop enough coordination to perform the fundamental movements in the time required.

Habit. As I become proficient, the fundamental movements become habits. My focus is on the goal and dynamics of the activity. Increased proficiency comes from performance under increasingly complex conditions.

Opportunities to build skills better and faster.

Expanded understanding of human perception. I have more than the basic five senses of taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing. Proprioception (body awareness) and balance are two examples that are critical to physical skills. All of my sense are broken down into components determined by the capabilities of my sensory cells. Proprioception is broken down into sensations of contraction and tension. Touch is a combination of pressure and vibration sensors. Vision is a combination of color, brightness, motion and edge detection – and even these subcomponents of vision have different degrees of accuracy in different parts of the visual field. Understanding human perception provides a deeper understanding of the inputs available for sensing cues, actions and results.

Precise definition of what success feels like. My ultimate goal for developing physical skills is to develop links between cues, movement and results. I measure all three things (cues, movements and results) by sensations. A deeper understanding of human perception helps me choose sensations as cues and sensations associated with results. Proficiency lies in the nuances of experience – the spacing and variation of notes that convey emotion in music or the distribution of weight during a soccer kick or baseball swing. A baseball flying over the outfield fence does not provide enough relevant information to consistently replicate the desired result. The feel of the distribution of weight and the feel of power transfer from the body, to the bat, to the ball are sensations which can be consistently replicated with enough practice.

Focus. Focus works as a sensory amplifier. All of my senses are on all the time but there is a limited amount of energy available to amplify signals. Vision usually dominates awareness but is often only a gross indicator for performance. Most of the movement cues for physical skills will be combinations of proprioception, balance and touch. For music it’s a balance of hearing, proprioception and touch. Focusing on the sensations providing the cues and the sensations tied to results will accelerate the learning process by amplifying those signals. Stronger signals = stronger memories.

Credit

Please visit the People page to see the people who have increased my understanding of what’s going on in my head.