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Episode 41: How Funky is Your Chicken, More on Motor Learning
720 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to Episode 41 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this solo ride, Sarah gets even deeper into the ins and outs of motor learning. Specifically, further components that can be easily brought into your class to help your students’ and clients’ motor learning.
You will learn:
- What is motor learning (a brief review)
- Motor learning stages: cognitive, associative, automatic
- 3 New methods to improve motor learning separate from cueing
- How Harry Styles' dancers displayed phenomenal skill at dealing with contextual interference at the Grammys this year
And more!
Sarah Court Motor Learning Presentation
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Hosts' Expertise
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court.
Mission of the Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up to date and cutting edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
Introduction to Motor Learning
00:00:37
Speaker
Hello, hello, it is me, Dr. Sarah Cort, physical therapist, and I am here to tell you even more about motor learning. We are going to review what motor learning is
00:00:50
Speaker
what the ways we've already discussed to improve it in our first three episodes about queuing are. That's an ugly sentence. Let me try that again.
Beyond Queuing: Enhancing Motor Learning
00:01:01
Speaker
We're going to review what motor learning is. We're also going to go over the ways we've already discussed to improve it in our queuing episodes. And then we'll talk about some other ways to work on it that aren't queuing related, but are still really good to know and are very easy to use as you are
00:01:19
Speaker
teaching classes, working with private clients, however you are your movement teacher self. Now, before I get into it, I want to ask a tiny teeny tiny teeny teeny teeny tiny favor of you all, dear listeners. My favor that I would like to ask you is this.
Listener Engagement Request
00:01:38
Speaker
Can you rate us five stars? It takes two seconds.
00:01:42
Speaker
you go on the site where you get your podcasts for a lot of you it's apple podcasts but there's lots of other ones and you go to the thing that says five stars and you click it and they all light up
00:01:56
Speaker
And what's really helpful about that is it's not just a massive ego stroke, which I'm not gonna lie, it is pretty nice to see five stars, but also it increases our visibility, which means more people like you who might be interested in us get a chance to see us and possibly get interested in us. So if you could do that, I would really appreciate it.
00:02:22
Speaker
Okay, so let's get into our episode.
Resources for Deeper Learning
00:02:25
Speaker
If you feel like you need a refresher on motor learning and the stages of motor learning, you can go back and listen to episode 29, in which we discuss internal and external cues and how external cues are better for improving motor learning, if that's what you're trying to do. Additionally, you can listen to episode 34, which is all about how feedback and the timing of feedback affects motor learning. In addition,
00:02:50
Speaker
I did a PowerPoint presentation on motor learning that is available on my personal website, sarahcourtdbt.com, which I will link to in the show notes. If you are a, I like to look at visual things while I'm learning.
00:03:04
Speaker
I'm going to go over basic motor learning concepts right now, but just as kind of a summary since we have already done the deeper dive in our prior episodes.
Exploring Episode Title and Motor Learning
00:03:13
Speaker
Now, this episode is called How Funky Is Your Chicken? And for the life of me, I don't remember why. I remember thinking it was a good idea at some point.
00:03:25
Speaker
But anyway, I thought I would leave it instead of just being like, well, I don't know what this is. I thought I would keep it as it is on the slim chance that my brain will dredge up some relatively recent memory of what I was thinking when I named this episode instead of just things like this lyrics to songs that I haven't heard in 20 years. I think it had something to do with learning the funky chicken, which is a dance move.
00:03:48
Speaker
and how you would need to be pretty coordinated to do it, which would require a decent level of motor learning. But now we're running into the thing where if you have to explain the joke, it's not funny
Compensatory Motor Patterns in Practice
00:03:58
Speaker
anymore. So anyway, what is motor learning? Motor learning is your ability to do any movement, be it walking,
00:04:06
Speaker
dance choreography, a jump shot, getting up and down from the floor, a deadlift, literally any kind of movement without requiring any cueing or assistance. You have learned the motor pattern or patterns required to successfully execute this movement and you can do it on your own. Now, one of the things I see all the time in the clinic is compensatory motor patterns. When someone has pain or an injury, for example,
00:04:33
Speaker
If your low back hurts when you walk, you start walking differently to try and minimize or get rid of the back pain, right? Makes sense. What I think is super interesting though, that is typically, even if the pain has resolved or the injury was 20 years ago and nothing hurts anymore, you don't automatically return to your prior motor pattern from your pre-injury self. So people are walking around with motor pattern compensations that have no
00:05:02
Speaker
a basis on how they're currently moving or how much pain they're currently in. A lot of my work involves sussing out what's going on with those motor patterns, why they're compensating, and then getting them to start using the right muscles at the right time in the right amount again. But I digress.
Stages of Motor Learning
00:05:21
Speaker
So that's what motor learning is. Let's talk about the stages of motor learning. So these are the stages that you would go through whenever you're learning a new kind of movement or perhaps relearning something after a surgery or injury. And there are three stages that your brain goes through in the learning process. These aren't conscious stages necessarily. It's just what's happening as you work on acquiring a movement skill.
00:05:46
Speaker
The first stage is called cognitive. You're in learning mode. You don't know anything about the thing yet. And so you're just working with broad brushstrokes. Like, you know, the first time you took a reformer class and you're like, Oh, I guess everybody else is putting their feet up in the straps. And I guess I should also be doing that too. Or, you know, the first time you tried to use a barbell, you're like, okay, I guess I'm squatting down and coming back up and we'll see what happens. Right? So it's, it's just early, early stages. You're brand new to the activity.
00:06:16
Speaker
The next stage is called associative. And as it sounds like, this is where you're starting to make associations. So you're saying, okay, well, in my squat, when my arms are up here on the bar, that means my head has to be here and my spine is over here, right? You're starting to put the pieces together.
00:06:35
Speaker
and draw a more detailed picture of the thing that you are doing. And then the third stage is called autonomic, which is a sort of medical way of saying automatic. And what that means is motor learning is complete. You have learned it, you can do it with no assistance, no cueing, no feedback necessarily, you've got it.
00:06:55
Speaker
Okay.
Cues and Feedback in Motor Learning
00:06:56
Speaker
So I'm going to dive a little bit more into talking about what we've learned in episode 29 and episode 34 so far. So in episode 29, we discussed internal versus external cues. Internal cues are ones where you're describing, you know, something like elongate your spine, right? Something on the inside of you. And that's good for creating awareness of your body.
00:07:17
Speaker
More sort of presence in the present right things like that external cues though are really really good for motor learning like point your knee at the door or reach your arms to the ceiling I now at this point pretty much only use external cueing in the beginning with someone when I'm teaching them something to do because I
00:07:40
Speaker
We're not yet at the point where we're trying to kind of feel our way from the inside out where things are. I'm literally like, your leg goes here, your arm goes here. And so those external cues are just, it's almost shorthand. It's a really quick way to get people to put their body places and it's better for motor learning. That's what a lot of research has found. And in episode 34, our episode on feedback, there's three components to think about with feedback, frequency, timing, and bandwidth.
00:08:11
Speaker
If you give feedback too frequently, if you give it too much, it's not good for motor learning. It doesn't give the person any room to make connections, right? Get into those associations that we need to do. If you do it too early, if you do it too soon, it's also not good for motor learning. It's good for someone to get feedback after the fact so that they then have to put the pieces together and go, oh, okay, so when I do this, I should be doing this thing with my arm or something like that.
00:08:38
Speaker
And bandwidth is how far away from what you're trying to get them to do. Will you let them go? How much will you let them dial up and down the radio bandwidth? And keeping the bandwidth really, really narrow where essentially you're putting them exactly where they're supposed to be, it's not that good for motor learning. It's much more useful for the person to feel where the quote unquote wrong place is so that they can also feel where the quote unquote right place is.
00:09:06
Speaker
So that's a real quick summary of that content. Again, feel free to go back to those episodes and take another listen if you want to review it in more
Advanced Learning Techniques
00:09:15
Speaker
detail. What I'm going to talk about today are other methods to positively influence a student or client's motor learning that are not Q-based. There are three things that we're going to talk about, variability, contextual interference, and whole task versus part task. Okay, so the first one, variability.
00:09:36
Speaker
So variability is the act of taking a movement or a yoga asana and creating different variations of it so that the original movement is still recognizable, the original shape is still recognizable, but we've made a significant enough change so that it requires different parts of the body to work differently. And there's a few different ways to create variations in shapes.
Movement Variability
00:10:01
Speaker
One is to take the shape and just flip it around, turn it on its side, on its back,
00:10:06
Speaker
upside down while maintaining the same basic outline. So if you visualize, for example, the shape of down dog, which is both shoulders in flexion and both hips in flexion, right? If I take that down dog and then I flip it upside down and so that the person is now sitting on their butt and their arms and their legs are in the air, now it's boat pose.
00:10:30
Speaker
And if I flip it around again and I have the person put their hands on the ground and their feet go up the wall, it is a L-shaped handstand. And if you flip that around and you put your hands on the wall and your feet on the ground, now it's a down dog at the wall and so on and so on. This could be a really fun way to teach where you are pointing out to your students, hey, look, here we are in this shape again. And now you're upside down. It's the same shape.
00:10:59
Speaker
you've got your feet on the wall and it's the same shape and now your hands are on the wall and it's the same shape. Another way to create variability is to add a prop or the wall taking some part of the shape from being closed chain to open chain or open chain to closed chain that will keep the basic shape the same but change what muscles are working and how much. So an easy example is you've probably seen or done
00:11:26
Speaker
warrior two pose with your back foot pressing into the wall that back edge of your foot the pinky toe side of your foot and then also possibly your back arm pressing into a block into the wall and so you're getting all of this feedback from having the closed chain of your back arm and your back foot that then is going to let you kind of just experience the pose in a different way and maybe
00:11:49
Speaker
make some adjustments to where you are in space. These are just a few examples. There's tons of possibilities, tons of ways to mix things up. Especially if you're working with a piece of equipment like a reformer, it can be really fun to play around with, okay, this is what this was like when you do it in mat Pilates, but now here we're on the reformer, and instead of your feet being open chain, now your feet are in the straps, or now your hands are in the straps.
00:12:13
Speaker
that pulling action is you're actually pulling against something and there is resistance and it feels different. It's really fun, I think, to play around with variability. It's going to keep you excited about your sequencing as well.
Environmental Impact on Learning
00:12:29
Speaker
What all this variability means is that the person is being encouraged to make associations, which is that second stage of motor learning. They're associating the shape in different positions with different feedback from
00:12:44
Speaker
closed chain versus an open chain with different muscles working, things like that. And they're also doing something called generalization, where they are recognizing the carryover and relationship between all of the different versions of the same shape. And it's also forcing them to do some problem solving on their own, which we also saw highlighted in the feedback episode when we talked about not giving feedback until after the movement was over and then letting them do it again on their own.
00:13:12
Speaker
and problem solve their way into the adjustments that you want them to make. Problem solving ultimately makes you learn movement better than just having it spoon fed to you. The same way if you have to learn how to get somewhere, you're gonna learn it better without the GPS just telling you, you know, turn right here, make a left at the stop sign. Although, you know, if you're me, you might get lost a few times along the way.
00:13:36
Speaker
Variability is a pretty easy thing to bring into your class or your sessions, and it can actually really perk up your sequencing. You can give yourself, for example, the constraint of I'm going to have them get into a variation of the shape of Warrior III at least five times in class, which means you get to bounce around beforehand and figure out all these variations and which ones are going to be the most successful and which ones seem like a good idea, but then when you tried them, they actually weren't that great of an idea.
00:14:06
Speaker
It improves your modal learning too. So I'm a big fan of variability and it's pretty easy to bring in without a lot of fuss. The next category is called contextual interference, which is the changes that you can make in the environment around the student. So I will be the first to say my favorite place in a class, in any class, honestly, is in the back and preferably in a corner.
00:14:33
Speaker
I want to be visible to as few people as possible. I basically want to disappear.
High Interference and Learning
00:14:39
Speaker
And I always hated it when the teacher would say, okay, now everyone pick up your mat and put it in a different place in the room. You know, for me that's up there with like, okay, hey, welcome everybody. Let's go around the room and everyone say your names and what brought you to this and what you're hoping to learn, you know, just a really high ick factor.
00:14:59
Speaker
but it's actually really, really great for motor learning. And we're going to talk about how in a minute. So in terms of contextual interference, right? This interference with the environment around the student, you can have high contextual interference and you can have low contextual interference. So low contextual interference is you're always in the same place in the room. The teacher plays the same music. The room is the same temperature. I'm on my personal favorite.
00:15:28
Speaker
exactly perfectly worn in the right way yoga mat, it's the right kind of flooring, there's the right amount of airflow, and so on and so on. This does not promote motor learning because we are somewhat reliant on and attached to the environment always being the same when we do the poses. We don't have to do any generalization because it's exactly the same every single time.
00:15:56
Speaker
While I mean, you know, I am a creature of habit and I really Enjoy things like that where where it's like I'm coming into the situation. I know how it's gonna go So it's mixing up your habits which from a kind of personal comfort position might not feel the greatest and
00:16:16
Speaker
from a motor learning position, it's really, really useful to have to generalize. So the opposite of low contextual interference is high contextual interference. And that's when you're going to change up as many things in the environment as you possibly can. So you are in a different part of the room. Let's say you're the teacher. Maybe you change the temperature you put on different music or no music. Maybe when you're practicing, you always wear your favorite
00:16:45
Speaker
I don't know, especially stretchy pants. And next, you know, you're going to practice in like some gym shorts instead. Maybe you take class outside. You practice outside in the grass with no mat at all and no music and it's really sweaty. Maybe you practice on a gentle slope, which is going to change about pretty much everything about how all your different muscles have to work in order to handle the different gradient. The higher the contextual interference
00:17:14
Speaker
the more you have to generalize, and then the more that it leads to motor learning. Which means you can do that pose or movement even when the environment around you is completely different. Hey everybody, Sarah here. Laurel and I started Movement Logic in 2017 with Trina Altman because we saw a problem in the kind of continuing education that was available to movement teachers. I mean, there was plenty of it. That wasn't the problem.
00:17:42
Speaker
But there wasn't much functional, useful, applicable movement education that teachers could really turn around and use immediately with their clients. So we set out to do things a little differently.
00:17:55
Speaker
six years, six tutorials, and two additional collaborators later, Jessel Preak and Anula Myberg, and we're really proud of the library of tutorials that we've created. To celebrate, we're bringing back our wildly popular site-wide tutorial sale. Every movement logic tutorial contains hours of anatomy, kinesiology, myth-busting, and most importantly, dozens and dozens of exercises that will help you train strength, flexibility, and functional movement
00:18:24
Speaker
for whatever you or your clients want to do in life. And the more you invest, the more you save with up to 35% off our popular tutorials. But don't delay because this sale goes away at the end of this month. Click the link in the show notes to learn more and get your discount or go to movementlogictutorials.com and click on the site-wide sale button on the homepage.
00:18:51
Speaker
So I want to tell a little story real quick about some incredibly high contextual interference and some stellar generalizability in action.
Adapting to Reversed Directions
00:19:02
Speaker
And this is the true story of Harry Styles at the Grammy Awards 2023 earlier this year. So Harry Styles had a revolving platform as part of his performance. And there was about maybe a dozen dancers on the platform with him.
00:19:20
Speaker
And when they rehearsed the whole routine, the platform was rotating in one direction. That's actually not a pun. But on the night of their performance, for whatever reason, the platform started rotating in the opposite direction with no warning, right? So you can sort of see, and I'm going to link to the video of it, because I think it's interesting to watch, you can sort of see in the first few seconds
00:19:47
Speaker
In particular, Mr. Styles seems quite sort of thrown. I mean, I'm sure they all are, but he also has to be singing. So you can see his singing kind of wavers a little bit. And then he basically is like, well, I'm going to excuse myself from this situation. And I don't know if he was supposed to be still on the platform that was now revolving backwards to the way they had learned it, but he jumped off of it pretty early. But the dancers had to stay on. And this is something where, you know, hats off to
00:20:15
Speaker
every single professional dancer out there because without missing a beat, they all took the entire routine and did it in reverse with no rehearsal, right? That is an insane level of contextual interference, right? That's not just like, oh, you know, I usually am on the left side of the room and now I'm on the right side of the room or
00:20:39
Speaker
This is the first time I'm doing this outside and it feels different, anything like that. That is you are actively reversing everything in your head as you go. And it's amazing, they do it. And that's because dancers spend so much time just being so aware of where their body is and they're masters of motor learning. If you haven't seen the video, I really recommend that you go watch it because no matter where you lie on the, you know, if you're a Harry Styles fan or not, it is fascinating to watch these people just
00:21:09
Speaker
incredibly picket like without missing a beat they they do the entire routine in reverse.
Teaching Single vs. Series Movements
00:21:15
Speaker
Okay so we've had our first two categories we have variability and we have contextual interference. Our last category that we're going to look at is whether you should teach something as a whole task or a part task meaning should the person learn the thing completely in one go
00:21:33
Speaker
Or should it be broken down into its components and which option is better for motor learning? The answer, of course, as so much of the time is it depends. But what it depends on is what exactly you are teaching. So doing something whole task.
00:21:52
Speaker
teaching the entire thing in one go is best for motor learning of what are called single discrete movements, like a yoga asana, right? Your feet go here, your arms go here, lifting a weight, like performing one weight lifting movement.
00:22:08
Speaker
one Pilates exercise, and so on. As far as motor learning is concerned, there's no value in doing just the upper body or just the lower body when the goal is to do the whole thing in one. You might talk about one part of a movement in your feedback. For example, as you are lifting the barbell overhead, get your head out of the way first before you lock out your arms, or as you root down through your standing leg, reach tall through the crown of your head in tree pose.
00:22:36
Speaker
But overall, you're teaching it in one piece. So the person learns how the upper and lower body behave together. So the opposite of that part task, that's really best when it's not just a single position or movement, but a series of movements that connect together, like walking, running, sun salutation,
00:22:57
Speaker
dance choreography, tennis serve, anything where there are separate parts that can be pulled out from the hole before putting it back together. So in that instance, you're going to get more motor learning when you take it apart, learn it a piece at a time, and then put it back together.
00:23:14
Speaker
I mean, I think that feels pretty obvious. Like even if you're not a dancer, you can see the value in, you know, learning it eight counts at a time rather than somebody demonstrates the entire three minute routine. And then you try to do the entire thing at once. You know, it does, it doesn't make sense, right? It makes sense to break it into pieces, learn the pieces and then put the pieces together. And it's the same with something like a tennis serve. It's a series of movements, the tennis serve, right? You have to lean back on your back leg and then you,
00:23:43
Speaker
throw the ball up in the air and then while you're doing that you also then bring the racket up and behind you and then you have to get the timing of the you know if you're jumping to hit the ball you have to jump at exactly the right point and then you hit the ball and then you land you know and so People work on things like just the ball toss Over and over again trying to put the ball exactly in the air where you want it to be before putting it back together into that entire series of movements and
00:24:12
Speaker
So for movement teachers' work and perspective, it means you're just gonna teach the whole pose or the whole exercise in one go. You're not gonna break it down. And even something like a sun salutation, for example, it's not that complicated of a series of movements that it really requires taking it fully apart before you learn it. I mean, I don't remember ever any teacher doing that about sun salutations. We just kind of learned the whole thing in one.
00:24:42
Speaker
You just repeated it, right? Because it wasn't, you step or jump back, right? You step or jump forward.
00:24:47
Speaker
fold over, reach your arms up, that whole, you know, it's not a very complicated series of movements. So in a yoga class, in a Pilates class, when you're teaching weightlifting, anything like that, you know, you may be providing variations or regressions for people in class based on their needs. But as far as like, okay, here we go, let's learn warrior one, you're just giving them the whole body instruction in one go.
00:25:14
Speaker
and that's going to help them learn it the most effectively.
Episode Summary and Engagement
00:25:19
Speaker
Okay, so to sum up what we learned today, these three other ways that you can improve people's motor learning that are not based on cueing are, the first one is variability,
00:25:36
Speaker
And that is where you change things up in the movement or exercise itself, where the basic shape is still recognizable. But it's different enough that the student has to do some generalizing, which is really good for motor learning. The second category is contextual interference, where you're going to change things up in the environment. So variability, you're changing up the movement. Contextual interference, you're changing up the environment. And the more things you change,
00:26:06
Speaker
the more that they have to generalize about and thus improving motor learning. And then the last one is whole task versus part task. You just wanna make sure that you select the right one, that you choose a whole task for single movements and part task for a series of movements and that way they get the most possible motor learning out of it. Okay. I hope you enjoyed this short but sweet episode.
00:26:36
Speaker
and that it's given you some new information about motor learning and has inspired you to try out a few of these ideas in your teaching and see what happens. You can check out the show notes for links to the references I mentioned in this podcast, including the Harry Styles Grammy performance and including a tutorial on how to do the funky chicken, if that is something that you're interested in learning.
00:27:00
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. And finally, it helps us out. If you liked this episode, please subscribe. And you already, uh, are rating it because I asked you to do that at the beginning of the episode. Maybe if you've got a little extra time, shoot us a review on Apple podcast or whatever, or wherever you listen to this podcast. We really, really appreciate it. It's helping us to grow. We are growing. It's very exciting. So if you've got a moment and you've been enjoying this, you know, more not,
00:27:30
Speaker
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