As the owner of a sports performance
facility I, unsurprisingly, am always thinking of individuals acquiring skill in
the context of sport. In almost every sport there is a method of skill development
implemented that is meant to simulate challenges that the sport itself will
impose on the individual without the individual actually partaking in the sport.
Examples of this are a golfer hitting buckets of balls on the driving range, a
baseball player taking batting practice or throwing a bullpen, a basketball
player performing ball handling drills, a tennis player practicing their serve,
etc. An obvious limitation to performing these drills is that the situations
encountered by the individual in the sports previously mentioned rarely, if
ever, play out in precisely the manner they are simulated during practice.
Understanding that this limitation
exists in most of our practice sessions should allow us to ask ourselves how we
can better prepare athletes for the unpredictable environments encountered in competition. Regarding skill acquisition, Magill and Anderson (2017) suggest
that there are two dominant theories that exist: The Motor Program-Based Theory
(MPBT) and The Dynamical Systems Theory (DST).
The MPBT suggests that any skill is
under the control of executive function. (Magill & Anderson, 2017) Skills
therefore, need to be stored as memory and called upon when needed. Richard Schmidt
has provided the most support to the way we presently think about the MPBT.
(Magill & Anderson, 2017) Schmidt, when considering the MPBT of skill
acquisition hypothesized that in every individual exists a general motor program
(GMP). This is described by Magill & Anderson (2017) as “a mechanism that could
account for the adaptive and flexible qualities of human coordinated-movement
behavior.” Schmidt’s theory suggests that the GMP controls a class of actions that
a person must retrieve from memory and then add movement-specific parameters to
fit the context of their particular situation. (Magill & Anderson, 2017) It
is my opinion that the MPBT provides support to the acquisition of skills that rely
on open-loop control systems. In an open-loop system, feedback is not required
to alter movement instructions that were provided prior to initiation of the
movement. (Magill & Anderson, 2017) An open-loop system would likely rely
on attractor states, which can be thought of as states of behavior that represent
the individual’s preferred actions. (Magill & Anderson, 2017)
The
DST is a multidisciplinary theory that sees human movement control as a complex
system that changes in response to external stimuli in a non-linear fashion. (Magill & Anderson, 2017)
Concepts critical to the DST are constraints, self-organization, patterns, and
stability. (Clark, 1995) Newell (1986) suggested that constraints could be
related to the organism, the environment, or to the task at hand. In the DST it
is thought that “chaos” is created in the form of constraints and the
individual is then forced to analyze the chaotic information and self-organize
their own strategies in the form of patterns to overcome the specific
challenges they are provided with. The DST suggests that it is these new
patterns formed through self-organization that ultimately lead to a change in
behavior. (Clark, 1995) In my opinion, the DST aligns itself more with skills
that rely on closed-loop control systems. Closed-loop systems rely on the initiation
of a movement, but also the adaptation of that movement strategy based on the
feedback they receive through the peripheral nervous system before the movement
is completed. (Magill & Anderson, 2017) It’s worth noting that the DST also
refers to attractors as stable collective states of the dynamical system.
(Clark, 1995) These states are described as ones that are either not perturbed
in any way by external stimuli or in such a small manner that the system
maintains its original trajectory. (Clark, 1995)
As
I previously noted, I believe skills that require less feedback and are
performed in a more stable environment will likely lend support to the
existence of a GMP being called upon to rehearse a previously practiced skill.
Throwing a dart at a dart board, driving a golf ball down a straight fairway on
a day with no wind, or bowling on an unaltered lane are all skills that come to
mind when I think of the MPBT. My opinion is that the DST plays itself out more
often in sports and skills that take place in environments with more unpredictable
variables. When I think of shorter statured individuals in basketball becoming
great ball handlers and shooters I think of the DST and a constraints-based
approach.
I
think that as practitioners trying to understand which theory is more efficacious
we should consider that the answer to the question is dependent on context. The
context of the skill an individual is seeking to achieve and the individual
him/herself matters. Skills that take place in more stable environments can
probably be trained and learned in a manner that aligns itself with the MPBT.
That said, though they may be few, we should also try and determine which
variables are dynamic regarding the skill and train them with the DST in mind. In
contrast, skills that take place in an ever-changing environment should be
trained as such, but we should be cognizant that those skills are sometimes
performed in a stable environment. Understanding the skill being acquired/taught/learned
and the individual that is trying to acquire/learn the skill should provide us
with the information necessary to do the best job possible when working to
assist individuals trying to acquire new skills.
References
Clark,
J. (1995) On Becoming Skillful: Patterns and Constraints. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 66(3), 173-183.
Magill,
R. A., & Anderson, D. I. (2017) Motor
learning and control: Concepts and applications (11th ed.) New
York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Newell,
K. M. (1986) Motor development in
children: Aspects of coordination and control. Boston, MA: Martinus
Nijhoff.
