I am nineteen years old, and I cannot hit a baseball tossed at me very well AT ALL. I'm pretty sure some of my little cousins would be better than me. I don't have an excuse...until now!!
Today, in KIN 262 (Motor, Growth, and Development), the topic was skill acquisition. When learning motor skills such as walking, running, hopping, skipping, throwing, catching, striking (batting counts as this)...etc, what determines how well these skills mature?
I'm sure when an infant has his/her first steps, it's still pretty noobsauce McNuggets. The infant's gait will be very flat-footed, arms are out or up to help with balance, and steps are small and slow. Now compared to our gait patterns, we step from heel-to-toe, our arms are comfortably at our sides, and are steps can be long and quick but still very precise.
"OH!! I see!! It's because we're older!! We're better at walking because we're older!!"
How about a skill such as throwing? I think for throwing, it's really unfair to compare the throwing ability of an infant to one of an adolescent or teenager, but does throwing ability necessarily reach mature levels as you age?
For some people, it may seem obvious to assume that skills mature because we mature...age-wise, but it gets more complicated when we examine other skills such as throwing and catching...or batting.
Of course, while you age, your central nervous system continues to develop and that makes coordinating your movements and actions more efficient because your neurons are able to communicate better, but that won't get you that far. It's practice, buddy. The more one practices a skill, the better he/she will become at it. And coincidentally with walking, age goes hand-in-hand with practice. Or it should be. If a toddler has taken more steps than a perfectly able nineteen year old, I'll be worried. Skills emerge through stages. It's a progression of a skill going from an immature stage to mastery level. So with more and more practice, skill ability will continue to improve through the stages.
HA! So there's my excuse for why my batting is so suck...I just don't have enough practice.
Ooh ooh ... I just randomly thought of something. Back then, when my little cousins and I were all younger, they would always associate me being better at stuff because I'm "older." I call bull-spit on them now! It's only because I had more practice.
Ooh ooh ... I just had another thought. So the other day, I was playing volleyball with Eileen, and we tried to serve with our left hand. In the pathetic attempts, I found that my left hand didn't really know what it was doing. With my right hand, it's very clear how to coordinate proper form to execute a basic overhand serve. However, my left hand would get everything wrong. My torso is twisting with it instead of just facing my target, my elbow is very close to my side instead of freely away from my body, and instead of an overhand motion swinging all the way through I had a crouched-arm-shooting-upward-to-catch-a-fly motion. This may be due to lack of practice as well. Just as my right hand was in its infantile stages when first learning the skill, my left hand is at that stage because, for it, this is when it's first learning the overhand serve. Before I can perform the skill well with my left hand, it has to go through the stages of skill development too...with practice.
UH....CAMEL!!
Woo ha! I feel so energized at 7:30am!! Okay...not really. I got up today at 5:45am, because I had to go down to the Firefighter Institute in Champaign to conduct simple fitness assessment on the firefighters there. We assess their fitness now and after their 6-week training program and basically see how well they've improved.
This was for my research lab by the way. Not that I've ever mentioned it really in my previous posts yet, but I'm in a research lab called the Exercise Psychophysiology Lab (ExPPL). Primarily, our focus is the effects of exercise on more cognitive and psychological factors. This fitness assessment, however, just evaluates the consequences of exercise on physical health. It doesn't seem to correlate well with our lab's focus and it seems obvious that "DUH! If you exercise, you'll get stronger and improve your physical fitness and body composition," but the lab has been conducting this research for a long, long time now before the benefits of exercise were so well-known. We continue the research just as something cool.
Anyways, the new firefighters took part in the following assessments: weight, bench press test, sit-and-reach flexibility test, waist-to-hip ratio, and skinfold tests (which measures subcutaneous, outermost, layer of fat at specific spots on the body).
I WAS IN CHARGE OF THE WAIST-TO-HIP RATIO!! It's not the most exciting job, but I was still really happy that they actually made me responsible for one of the tests instead of just having me observe or whatever. It's a pretty simple task, but it was still really fun and I wasn't nervous. When the three groups walked in, I would announce that I'll be taking their waist-to-hip ratios, waist being the smallest part of the torso usually around the belly button area and hip being where the hip bone is, and in order to get an accurate measurement, the guys and girl would need to roll up their sweatshirts a bit. After the announcement, they would step up one-by-one and I'll do my thing.
Since this test is relatively fast compared to the others, I had free time so I measured my own circumferences. My waist is 28 inches and my hip is 29 inches. My head is 21 inches. And I couldn't measure my chest by myself...and it was awkward to ask someone else to help me. I also did sit-and-reach. I was surprised... I got a sit-and-reach score of 10 inches. I'm positive that is more than I was in grade school. YAY!! I want to try their bench test too. Both guys and girls had to complete bench presses matching a certain rhythm set by a metronome. There was 0% incline on the benches, the guys used 85 lbs, and the girl used 35 lbs. There isn't a standard for how well either sex is supposed to do since this is only measuring improvement or decline in fitness, but the highest # of reps a guy was able to do to the rhythm was 70 reps and the girl did 20 reps. Really impressive on both parts.
So it's only been my second week shadowing an OT (Occupational Therapist), but it's been such a great experience already. Even though I have to wake up at 7am for it, it's totally worth it. The three hours fly by so quickly, and I really appreciate my OT, Sonya. She is such a sweetheart, and she's really happy to answer all my questions and also to fill me on the patients' history and etc. What a run-on sentence. Sometimes, even little things like placing the wheelchair a certain way has a very distinct purpose, and she'll tell me why she does that. It really means a lot to me that she even tells me these minute details.
Every day has been mostly observations with sponge baths or showers since I do go in the mornings, but it's not as bad as I imagined. Actually, it's not bad at all. I thought it would be this weird procedure where I awkwardly just stand there (DUH...being an observer and all) while the patients clean themselves with some assistance by Sonya. It really isn't though. I guess that being in a professional setting, the immature awkwardness I expect just isn't there. Sonya is very professional and the patients are very chill too.
Today, I was a bit awkward because it was the first time observing a female patient. After closing the curtains, I kind of awkwardly stood behind the curtain (not observing), but the female patient waved me in (she could not speak due to a stroke) letting me know that if I'm an observer, I better observe. WHICH IS TRUE!! They understand better than I do what I'm there for--to learn and observe.
Even through these showers, I'm learning a lot too. Every day, I learn soooooooooooo much just from watching Sonya do her thang, asking Sonya questions, or even talking to the patients. Today, I learned about a term called "subluxation". Referring back to the female patient I mentioned before who had suffered from a stroke, subluxation, partial dislocation of a joint, of the right shoulder was a big concern for her. There was something about the joint of the shoulder that, unlike a ball-and-socket joint, the muscle around it has a big role in maintaining the position of that joint. Because she had a stroke on the left side of her brain, her right limbs are paralyzed...she had no (or little) tone in her shoulder to support her shoulder. If it just hung down, gravity would literally pop that baby out of her arm socket. So, whenever she lay or even sat, she had a pillow her family (who are fucking awesome) brought her which she can tuck under her armpit to support her shoulder...sort of pushing it upwards.
Learning these little things now will definitely prepare me for the future, and I feel I can retain it better this way.
In addition, I think one of the best things about being there is interacting with the patients. Even though they're being helped, they help you in a lot of ways too. It's very inspirational to see that even in such an unfortunate situation, the patients can remain upbeat and positive. Again, referring to the kind woman who had a stroke, she was a flippin' fireball. In addition to being half paralyzed by her stroke, she was also unable to speak. However, even without speech, she was amazingly animated with facial expressions, gestures with her left arm, etc. She was so sarcastic, she was so spunky. She was such a hoot. I can only imagine how much of a character she would be if she would talk. Her family was there too today, so it was really fun interacting with all of them and cracking jokes and stuff. She was the mom...and it was clear to see how her personality had rubbed off on her family cause they were all hoots. Fireball, for reals.
Another example was with this one patient from last week. He had suffered a terrible spinal fracture from a car accident. The smallest movement of the back would cause him tremendous pain. That day, we had just spent two hours giving him a shower, which he greatly appreciated, before returning him to his room. You can imagine how exhausted and in pain he was in, under his conditions, just taking a shower. Even so, when I was in the room with him while Sonya got him grooming supplies, he used his grabber to point to where a chair hung on the wall, offering me a seat. In my mind, I'm thinking, "This guy is so drained and is enduring so much pain...yet he has the courtesy to even offer me a chair to sit while I wait for a few minutes." What a great man!
I think that this is my favorite part of observing at the hospital. It's these little interactions with the patients that make it all so rewarding and inspiring. I may not explain my experiences that well, but it really is a huge moment. They acknowledge that "hell yeah...getting better is a process" but they're doing it the best they can, and they're staying upbeat...looking forward to better days. They don't give up. Seeing them do it, it gives me strength to overcome issues I have and do it positively. Instead of dwelling on what's hard about it and what sucks about it, I can only look forward at good things to come. I think that we can all be a bit inspired by these guys.
