Deconstructing motor skills [Harvard Gazette]

[nevets88]

A little stupid monkey and slow short specific indirectly referred to in this piece. Reassuring that stuff you've baked in you don't have to think about, which I still have problems trusting, ymmv.

Quote

Such independence and modularity is critical, Ölveczky said, because it allows different features of a behavior to be modified independently if circumstances change. Parallel learning of different features can also speed up the learning process and enable the flexibility we see in birdsong and many human motor skills.

“If you learn something — it could be your tennis serve, or it could be any behavior — and you need to slow it down or speed it up to fit some new contingency, you don’t have to completely re-learn the whole thing, you can just change the timing, and everything else will remain exactly the same.

“In fact, ‘slow practice,’ a technique used by many piano and dance teachers, makes good use of this modularity,” Ölveczky said. “Students are first taught to perform the movements of a piece slowly. Once they have learned it, all they need to do is get the timing right. The technique works because the two processes — motor implementation and timing — do not interfere with each other.”

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/09/deconstructing-motor-skills/

[billchao]

I remember, during my first year of playing, reading in Tiger's book that he liked to practice by making ultra slow motion swings and get the motion correct. It was something he liked to do even without a club in his hands and he took a lot of pride in hitting a driver perfectly 150 yards or something.

It's always stuck in my head and has been part of my practice routine, for better or worse. Worse because before I was getting guided instruction, I would train motions that were not the root cause of my issues and end up not fixing anything or creating more problems.

I used to know a lot about the golf swing. Now I just think I do 

[Patch]

Slow, repeated movements have always been part of my practice routines in every sport/game I have played. I can still remember slow fielding routines when I was in little league baseball in the late 50s. Most iare positional stuff, that evolved into a more fluid movement as posted above.

However, as with anything we humans physically do, or mentally process, it still boils down to our own  personal genetic timing barriers as to what  we can achieve at something. Some folks learn faster, while others are much slower. Some folks move faster, while others move slower. Some folks are more physically and mentally able to learn and acomplish things easier than others. 

In golf fewer folks will reach professioal status, while more will never come close to breaking 100, 90, or 80 on a regular basis because of their individual genetics. 

[Club Rat]

I relate to controlled movements versus various slow motion drills. Control can be at any speed as long as I stay in the process I'm attempting. An example with other sport movements would be teaching a child to properly slide to a base. If one would attempt to slide at a very slow movement, the necessary movements would be difficult. Gravity controls many motions and could hinder the experience.

Not that I'm arguing slow motion training is compromising specific training or drills in golf swings, but I lean towards controlled movements being a better experience.