Motor Control Learning Models and Theory -- Applicability to Teaching Skiing?

[Mike King]

Coming over to a new thread from the NZ Rookies Thread.

Last year in Aspen, one of our themes from season training was the use of external cues in learning a motor control skill. Our training site has an academic paper by Wulf, Shea and Lewthwaite titled "Motor skill learning and performance: a review of influential factors." One of the points of the paper was that organizing practice in learning a motor control skill by focusing on external cues significantly reduced the time to achieve "automaticity" of the movements and increased retention relative to those focusing on internal cues. External cues are those that are oriented to the effects of the movement as opposed to internal cues, which focus on the movements themselves. From the paper, the example of an external cue might be the swing of the club as opposed to the swing of their arms. The paper is copyrighted, but perhaps it is ok to include a snapshot of the first figure:

This result, and the paper that showed it, intrigued me, so I started trying to find out more about this area of academic research. I found that there is a huge field study called motor control learning, and that it has what appears to be a large amount of experimental research that documents how people learn motor control skills and, most importantly, what are the most effective ways to learn a motor control skill. When one starts probing the area, you find that motor control theory spans multiple disciplines, from kinesiology to psychology, and from neurology to physical and occupational therapy. One can find all sorts of interesting things that might have application to teaching skiing, yet I've seen almost no mention of it in the ski instruction literature. Sure, PSIA-RM picked up Fitts and Posner, but I've not really seen Ann Gentile's model discussed, and it appears that Nikolai Bernstein, who developed his model well before either of them and whose model appears to be more generally accepted in academic circles today than the other two, has not been used at all, as far as I can tell.

So, I thought we might start a thread here to see if anyone has actual knowledge of this area and has successfully used some of these ideas in their own teaching. Perhaps @Brian Finch? In any case, here are a few things that are in the public domain that those interested might choose to read:

http://www.trenerforeningen.org/magill-feedback.pdf
https://www.krigolsonteaching.com/uploads/4/3/8/4/43848243/chapter_12-_the_stages_of_learning.pdf
https://www.scienceforsport.com/skill-acquisition/#toggle-id-1

If you have other references that might be useful, please post them up -- I'm no expert, but am interested in this!

Mike​

 

[LiquidFeet]

The best book on the subject that I've found is The Art of Learning, by Josh Waitzken.

This is an in-depth memoir of how Waitzken trained to be a master chess player, achieving international status, then how he fared when he quit chess and switched to martial arts. He transferred his approach to advancing in the cerebral world of chess to the physical world of Tai Chi martial competitions, rising to world champion unexpectedly fast as an adult learner. He credits his fast rise to the learning approach he already was familiar with from his childhood as a chess player.

The book reads like a memoir, as precise as possible in its descriptors of Josh's training approach. It's psychological, philosophical, and specific to both chess and to competitive Tai Chi. It reaches the sublime in places. This is not a PhD in Education pushing a model of learning that he created, hoping for references in educational journals and textbooks. It's a book by a guy who lived and succeeded in two competitive worlds, chess and martial arts, sharing his experiences for those interested. His descriptions are useful for practitioners of chess and Tai Chi martial arts, and generalizable to other domains.

Relative to the previous post, Josh does describe what he focuses on. Focus is the dominant topic of every chapter. The targets of his focused attention change as he advances towards world champion status in both realms, and he talks about these changes in depth.

I highly recommend the book. Josh Waitzken, by the way, does not offer an easily memorized sequence of learning stages in a matrix or graph or chart of any sort. If you like what he has to offer, you'll need to read all the words. Oh, and there was a movie about him as a boy chess whiz. It's good too: Searching for Bobby Fisher.

 

[Brian Finch]

.... so, I was trained in the methodology of Shumway-Cook where postural control constitutes a considerable portion of the skill acquisition during the task.

I tend to look at a client’s readiness in terms of their postural strategy being either pure or compensated.

How’s that for a start?

PT’s look at weight shifting as either mature or immature. A mature shift accepts & holds ; immature shifting results in a collapse & reliance on structural attributes.

 

[karlo]

In my training-for-rehabilitation, my trainer has asked me, when doing squats and other glute/hamstring exercises, to think of moving my thigh bone, femur. That has a significant impact on what muscles are used.

In a recent one, working on external and internal rotation while on my back, she asked me to think of my foot as a dead log. Made a huge difference as to what muscles were being fired and exercised.

In both these cases, it was also a mental exercise. It took a number of tries to achieve that sensation of a moving just the femur, or feeling like the foot was dead. I can see, for sure, the mental part of it is critical to autonomous driving.

 

[HardDaysNight]

Last year in Aspen, one of our themes from season training was the use of external cues in learning a motor control skill.

Of all the edicts propounded by the various motor learning theories this, IMO, is the one that is the most applicable to and important for ski instruction. It also has a venerable history in the profession. Bob Hintermeister has written extensively about external vs. internal cues as related to skiing and his stuff is well worth the read. (I should warn everyone that Hintermeister has worked closely with Harb, so that might disqualify him.)

 

[Mike King]

Of all the edicts propounded by the various motor learning theories this, IMO, is the one that is the most applicable to and important for ski instruction. It also has a venerable history in the profession. Bob Hintermeister has written extensively about external vs. internal cues as related to skiing and his stuff is well worth the read. (I should warn everyone that Hintermeister has worked closely with Harb, so that might disqualify him.)

Thanks @HardDaysNight -- do you have any links to his writings?

 

[tch]

OK, not an instructor here, nor much of a theorist. BUT...I am interested in effective learning strategies. For me, it's been clear for a while that focusing on an image or metaphor of desired outcome (I am assuming I'm reading "external cue" correctly as this) is a LOT more effective for me that focusing on an explanation of how to make that happen. For instance, all the discussion in the Hip Dumping threads about subtalar joints, patellar angulation, and glute firing mean absolutely nothing to me. But give me an image of what I want to do, or, as Karlo says, a metaphor for a part of the movement, and I'm completely happy and can actually make progress.

 

[LiquidFeet]

Relying on external cues to tell us what we are doing instead of internal cues removes the possibility of being misled by our body's sensations. A recreational skier's sensations are notoriously unreliable because they haven't done the work of checking to see if they are moving body parts the way they think they are.

Building proprioceptive accuracy should be a goal of any motor training regimen. Excellent example: dancers working in front of a mirror. The external cues are given by the mirror. The dancer, through repetition, builds sensations (internal cues) that can be relied upon when a mirror is unavailable. It's important to note that dancers don't stop practicing fundamental movements in front of mirrors even when they are deemed experts.

I assume a dancer's need for continued mirror work is because there is a natural propensity for proprioceptive reliability to decline with time, in the same way our mental memories morph over time.

 

[Steve]

When you make a simple movement, say for example putting a forkfull of food in your mouth, you use a lot of different muscles and flexion and extension of various joints. Needless to say all you think about is where the fork is!

Granted we do need to focus on specific muscles and movement patterns to develop skills, but once we learn them, focusing on the skis is what works best for me. If I'm back and I'm focusing on my skis, I'll do something to get forward.

 

[HardDaysNight]

Last year in Aspen, one of our themes from season training was the use of external cues in learning a motor control skill.

Of all the edicts propounded by the various motor learning theories this, IMO, is the one that is the most applicable to and important for ski instruction. It also has a venerable history in the profession. Bob Hintermeister has written extensively about external vs. internal cues as related to skiing and his stuff is well worth the read. (I should warn everyone that Hintermeister has worked closely with Harb, so that might disqualify him.)

Thanks @HardDaysNight -- do you have any links to his writings?

I can’t find anything available online. I have hard copies of several articles and proceedings of conferences somewhere in my files. I shot him a message on LinkedIn asking if he has links he can send me.

 

[Mike King]

Relying on external cues to tell us what we are doing instead of internal cues removes the possibility of being misled by our body's sensations. A recreational skier's sensations are notoriously unreliable because they haven't done the work of checking to see if they are moving body parts the way they think they are.

Building proprioceptive accuracy should be a goal of any motor training regimen. Excellent example: dancers working in front of a mirror. The external cues are given by the mirror. The dancer, through repetition, builds sensations (internal cues) that can be relied on when a mirror is unavailable. It's important to note that dancers don't stop practicing fundamental movements in front of mirrors, even when they are deemed experts.

I assume a dancer's need for continued mirror work is because there is a natural propensity for proprioceptive reliability to decline with time, in the same way our mental memories morph over time.

@LiquidFeet make sure you read this page as it relates to Bernstein: https://www.scienceforsport.com/skill-acquisition/#toggle-id-1 -- one of his contributions to the field is known as Bernstien's law, which is the degree of freedom problem. That is, because a muscle does not fire in isolation, there are several potential solutions to a movement problem -- the solution is not unique. In other words, there are several ways of accomplishing the task. Think about edge change -- you can flex to release or extend to release. And we see examples of high level skiing that use either/both.

Anatomical differences may also lead one method to be superior for one client but inferior for another. So, in my uneducated but striving mind, external cues allows the client to find the solution that works for them as opposed to one that might be "trite" but anatomically inferior for the individual.

One of my several PT"s who recently completed her Ph.D. is searching her bookshelf for motor control/learning texts that I may explore. I think there's something here.

Mike

 

[Mike King]

Also, Bernstein's law is described on this Wikipedia page, but you will need to read between the lines to see it's implications...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrees_of_freedom_problem

 

[Mike King]

Of all the edicts propounded by the various motor learning theories this, IMO, is the one that is the most applicable to and important for ski instruction. It also has a venerable history in the profession. Bob Hintermeister has written extensively about external vs. internal cues as related to skiing and his stuff is well worth the read. (I should warn everyone that Hintermeister has worked closely with Harb, so that might disqualify him.)

I can’t find anything available online. I have hard copies of several articles and proceedings of conferences somewhere in my files. I shot him a message on LinkedIn asking if he has links he can send me.

Thanks -- very interested in the subject and Hintermeister appears to be an expert in motor control given a dissertation I did find that cited several of his papers.

 

[rustypouch]

Relying on external cues to tell us what we are doing instead of internal cues removes the possibility of being misled by our body's sensations. A recreational skier's sensations are notoriously unreliable because they haven't done the work of checking to see if they are moving body parts the way they think they are.

Building proprioceptive accuracy should be a goal of any motor training regimen. Excellent example: dancers working in front of a mirror. The external cues are given by the mirror. The dancer, through repetition, builds sensations (internal cues) that can be relied on when a mirror is unavailable. It's important to note that dancers don't stop practicing fundamental movements in front of mirrors, even when they are deemed experts.

I assume a dancer's need for continued mirror work is because there is a natural propensity for proprioceptive reliability to decline with time, in the same way our mental memories morph over time.

This is why I really like video.

 

[Blue Streak]

This is an excellent thread!
But the homework!