67 What are the potential advantages of using virtual environments (VE) to train and study sports skills? How should a VE be evaluated? How important is fidelity, presence, and cost? When is the best time to use a VE in relation to skill level and physical training? Why haven’t VE’s been more widely adopted? Download…
Read More[shadowbox] A Baseball Batter’s Perception of Spin & How it Relates to Hitting Performance One of the most interesting measurements that has come from the “Pitch f/x – Statcast Era” in baseball is pitch spin rate. While there has been a lot of discussion of how spin influences the flight of the ball, how it…
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66 A discussion with Gerard Jones, Head of Coaching at Bristol Rovers Football Club. We discuss topics including developing decision making skills in players through improved communication, how to handle regional differences in sports vocabulary, encouraging different levels of knowledge in players, and how to balance player and coach development. Download link More information about…
Read More[shadowbox] Pitch Tunneling & Perceptually Equivalent Pitches Recently I have become fascinated with the topic of pitch tunneling, not only because I am a big baseball fan but because it bears a striking resemble to some of the psychophysical experiments I did during my PhD (and since). Specifically, one’s designed to measure discrimination thresholds for…
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65 How important is feel or body awareness in sports? How can we assess kinaesthetic sensitivity and proprioceptive acuity in athletes and can these be improved through training? How does it influence an athlete’s ability to implement technical changes? Download link Articles: Level of competitive success achieved by elite athletes and multi-joint proprioceptive ability Exploring…
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64 How well can we integrate samples from a visual scene (e.g. when an outfielder is trying to catch a fly ball and has to look from the ball to the wall and back)? How long of a view do we need and what interval between samples can we tolerate? Does training to perform under…
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63 News: A look at a few recent articles in the area of motor learning and performance. Can skill execution be improved by combining self and expert models in video feedback? How do combat athletes using affordance to control interpersonal distance? How can we determine the degree to which the decisions made by teammates are…
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62 A discussion with Stephanie Rossit, Lecturer in Psychology from the University of East Anglia in the UK. We discuss perceptual and action related deficits in visual neglect, brain areas associated with online and offline control of action, her recent work with patient DF that challenges some well know previous findings, and her research examining…
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61 A discussion with Damian Farrow. Professor of Skill Acquisition at Victoria University in Melbourne Australia. We take a step by step look at practice design discussing how to determine the goals of practice, how to effectively manipulate constraints, how to achieve the right balance of practice variability, how to effectively use instruction and feedback,…
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60 A discussion with Jenelle Gilbert, Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, California State University Fresno. We discuss the importance of mental skills training in sports and beyond, her concept of the Psychological UNIFORM, using a Game Plan format to teach mental skills and her recent research looking at the stressors faced by coaches. Download…
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