20090715

Learning motor skills

Learning and developing some motor skills can be crucial to our life like walking, talking etc. Unlike inbuilt bodily functions like respiration and digestion these skills should be learned by practice and effort. There are some information and techniques that we should know which can improve learning a motor skill rapidly. The common motor skills we should develop are cycling, swimming, typing, skiing, driving etc. In the development of any motor skill one thing is common, that is practice. You can buy and read a book about how to play golf. You can clearly understand its rules and different techniques that are used by ace players. But even with these amazing amounts of information you cannot play golf, even one correct shot! For that you should practice it. You should have somebody to correct your posture and guide you.
Some motor skills can be developed by oneself like typing, dancing, playing a ball game. Practicing these motor skills does not pose any risks but except some motor skills like typing, dancing other motor skills involve some kind of risk involving them, like in the case of driving, diving, paragliding etc. You should need some professional guidance to study those skills that involve some kind of danger.
Typing is an excellent skill that you can develop by yourself. All you need is a computer and touch typing software. Fortunately many typing tutorial softwares are available free online. By practicing only 30 minutes a day for 30 days you can improve your typing speed about eight times. Additional benefits are
1. You don’t have to search for keys in the keyboard
2. Less strain to eyes because you don’t have to look back and forth between the screen and keyboard
3. You can think about what you are typing
4. And of course you can save a lot of time!
One important factor in learning motor skills is the spacing between learning sessions. For example, you cannot learn driving by practicing driving 8hrs in one day, but the results will be much better if you pass some time between the learning sessions. Say sixteen 30 minute session. In this case the time duration is the same 8hrs but the results will be much better in the latter case.
Interference while learning a skill should be avoided. Thus one should avoid taking a karate class and Tae Kwon Do class simultaneously. You can learn one skill and become good on it, and then you can move to the next. When you try to learn two motor skills at the same time period the movements become interfered and it will take more time to master both skills. Instead you can master one type of skills and then move to learning a similar type of skill, this way you can learning more fast and it will be simple to learn that skill.
Master the basics first before you go to advanced steps. We cannot do a bike stunt just after you learned how to balance a bike. Developing a motor skill need some time, patience and practice. In martial arts you can see even the black belts will be practicing the basic moves like punches and blocks. When practicing typing you only start with eight keys of the home row (ASDFJKL;). When learning a musical instrument you should learn how to play the basic tones and tunes. Even if you learned advanced techniques without perfecting your basic techniques, then it won’t be of much use. Think it in this way, you try to jump higher when you don’t properly know how to balance and stand up. What will happen? You’ll fall every time when to try jumping, hurting yourself.
Many people have a wrong attitude about failing many times before succeeding. After failing many times they’ll say ‘This is it!’ and stop trying. They don’t realize that failing each time is a great lesson for them. Even if they consciously don’t know their brain is learning at a rapid rate. To be more precise the learning rate is higher when the impact of failure is very high. Imagine the situation, you see a small child going to touch boiling water. You say to the child “Don’t touch the boiling water, you’ll get a burn”. He may stop by hearing this, but the next time the child experiences the same situation, he’ll not remember what you said last time. This is because he doesn’t know how painful the experience will be. In other words, he doesn’t have a reference point in his life about burning. Once the child has a painful experience of burning, the next time he’ll avoid the danger again, even if the pain he experienced is minor. The same is true for you in learning motor skills. You can learn from your mistakes. It shouldn’t have to be a major mistake. But mistakes that will endanger yours or others safety should be avoided in any cost. For example you cannot take chances by learning driving in a crowded city street. The activities that have risks in it should be learned under professional supervision. The important thing to keep in mind is this. It doesn’t matter how many times an average baby try and falls before he or she finally walks. The most important factor in learning is the right attitude towards learning.

No comments:

Post a Comment