That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Learning Sports Skills

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

In the last episode, we discussed the neuroscience behind hitting a tennis ball. However, we missed what happens when we learn new motor skills (like hitting a tennis ball). In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind learning complex sports skills. 

Hi, my name is Olaf Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. On our last episode, we talked about how you learn complex motor skills and specifically hitting a tennis ball. And we looked at the parts of the brain that were involved in movement planning and execution and how that all came together. Well, this is kind of the part two to that, which is we're going to review what happens when we

learn complex motor skills and also what happens at different ages and how we can improve learning complex motor skills. So on today's podcast, part two of learning and executing complex motor skills, in other words, sports skills like hitting a tennis ball. Well, when we start to learn a new skill, so let's just stick with the tennis ball idea. We're going to learn how to hit a forearm in tennis. Well, the first stage of learning that we go through is what's called the cognitive stage. This is when we don't have that motor program that we talked about on the previous episode. We don't really have anything. So typically when we're taught something, someone demos it for us, or we see a video of it, and someone gives us some instructions on how to do it. Now, we might not have all of those pieces, but we have some information. So we have sort of a

visual or mental representation in our brain. And interestingly enough, when we watch someone do something, a motor action, there are actually neurons in the brain called mirror neurons. And these neurons are activated, and they sort of simulate the action that you're observing. Now, I'll talk about mirror neurons in depth on a future episode, but we do have a part of the brain that's basically attuned to what we would call observational learning. So we see this thing, and we might get some verbal instructions, and we generate a motor program or a motor memory.

And if you remember, this is the order of events, the relative force and the relative time. But this is very cognitive in nature. This is the prefrontal cortex really doing a motor action. And this is conscious execution of a movement. And typically the cognitive stage of learning, we move through it pretty quickly, depending on the skill. The more complex the skill, the slower we move through the stage. But let's say if it was something like a forearm, we can get the basic gist of it in just a single practice session or two or three. And that's the prefrontal cortex guiding the motor movement.

and that's the prefrontal cortex guiding the motor movement. Very quickly, we move into the associative stage of learning, and most people spend a long period of time in the associative stage, because the next stage, and when we get there, you'll understand why. Now, the associative stage is where the activity in the prefrontal cortex is decreasing, and the activity in those movement planning regions, so the premotor cortex and the supplementary motor area, and supporting areas like the anterior cingulate cortex, that activity is increasing, and it's just a function of practice.

So literally, that shift from thinking about it to just being able to do it happens with practice. And the more we practice, the further we shift along that curve. So we think about it less, it becomes more automatic. And that takes us into the third stage of motor learning, which is called the autonomous stage. In principle, the autonomous stage or the automatic stage, you don't need the prefrontal cortex at all. The motor system, once it's told, hey, do the forearm, can take care of it on its own.

And it can just execute the movement. So it recalls that motor plan that we talked about, and it just executes it. Now, how long does it take to get there? Well, we talked about this back in season one. This is that 10,000 hours you might have heard about. Now, I mentioned this when I talked about expertise. That's not a hard number. In a lot of sports studies, it's been shown that people can get to this automatic stage with 5,000 hours of practice. What it really ties into is the complexity of the motor skill. The more complex the motor skill, then the longer it takes to get

to that automatic stage. So the shift is from cognitive where it's all prefrontal and you're thinking about it. If you learned a new motor skill, you've been through this phase where it's just in your head and you're like, well, where do I put my foot and where do I put my arm? And you move into the associative stage where you're able to execute the movement with a bit of thinking, but generally okay. And this is where you're refining the skill and improving. And then you move into the autonomous stage where the skill is automatic and you just execute it. Now, something to note here is that what happens typically at the automatic stage is we plateau. Our ability to improve is really minimal and the improvements are incremental.

So one of the tricks that people use at this stage, if this is where you're at, is changing your training program. So try something new. Like if you're using a specific drill, say to practice a skill, try a different drill, try moving in a different pattern. And the reason you're doing that is you're trying to start to form new neural connections. You're basically trying to restart that learning curve. And that's what happens with expert performances. Expert coaches are constantly challenging their athletes to try new things and try different ways of doing it. Like you might always come back to the same base technique, but moving outside that window

a little bit just to promote the growth of new neural connections now something else to to note here is there's a massive difference between how quick we we learn and master cognitive skills versus motor skills and you might have noticed that you can learn something cognitively within a you know a single session possibly depending on what it is whereas a motor skill it might take you you know months or years to possibly, depending on what it is. Whereas a motor skill, it might take you, you know, months or years to get good at it. And that's actually a property of the neurons themselves. You can't think that all neurons in the brain are the same. In fact, if you went to Google Images and just put in types of neurons, you'll see that there's all sorts of different

structures of neurons, and they all have different physiological properties. Now, I might go into this in a future episode, but just to keep this one on track, the take-home message is the neurons in the cognitive part of the brain are different than the neurons in the motor parts of the brain, and the neurons in the motor parts of the brain basically change more slowly. Now, what's the practical tip here? This is why it's so hard to change a technique. Once a technique becomes ingrained, say your golf swing is being done a certain way, it's so hard to change it because that connection, because it's taking so long to form, is really, really strong. And to change technique, you have to really force yourself to do it the new way over and over again and not slip back. And it takes a fair bit of time. That's why, you know, one of the things I say when I promote coaching,

and I used to be big into sports and I still am, is the most important time to teach technique is at a young age. Because at a young age, you can form that technique and once it's solidified, you know, it's really hard to change it. Now, why is it easier to learn sports skills at a young age? Well, pretty simply put, when we talked about this, when we talked about the developing brain, the brain is set up for plasticity in our early stages of life. You know, from the time you're born to basically your early 20s, that's when neuroplasticity is at its most efficient. New neural connections can form rapidly and we can change up sports skills and learn new things.

This is why young people pick up sports skills very easily because the brain is really in a perfect state for neuroplasticity. Now, what does that actually mean? Well, basically it means the brain isn't damaged yet. And I'll come to that in a second. And it means that neurotransmitters are at optimal levels. Everything is working in its perfect way. And the analogy I like to use is think of a new car. You know, when you have a new car, it functions efficiently because nothing has started to wear and tear yet. And that's why learning at an older age is more difficult. We can still learn new motor skills as we get older. You know, I've

watched 70-year-olds learn pickleball, the new trend in sports, right? And the reason they can learn it is because the brain is capable of learning throughout the lifespan, but learning takes place more slowly. And that's because the neurons themselves have changed. The neural system is damaged, just like your car after, you know, imagine you drove a car for 70 years, you know, it would be worn and it wouldn't work as good as it used to. And that's the same for our neural pathways within our brain. Our neural transmitter levels are down and it just takes longer for plasticity to occur but we can still learn throughout the lifespan now we've touched on this before but i thought

i'd go through it briefly which is ways we can improve learning so i'm just going to do some quick hits with this concept number one distributed practice if you're going to learn a new sport skill and you're going to practice four hours a week, you are better to do four blocks of one hour than to do two blocks of two hours. Doing four blocks of one hour is more distributed than doing two blocks of two hours. And if it works, you might even do eight blocks of 30 minutes. So as opposed to doing mass practice, practicing all of the skill for a long period of time, break it down into shorter periods of time. Random practice. If you're

learning two or more movement skills, practice them alternatively. So as opposed to practicing, say, a forearm pass in volleyball for 20 minutes and a set for 20 minutes. You might alternate them, so you're passing, then setting, then setting, then passing. Then that's random practice. Now, we talked about this before, but in brief, typically it's very hard to do. People don't like it because it challenges them, but people learn more. Another concept is variable practice. Let's say you're learning to shoot a basketball. You shouldn't always shoot from the same distance. You should vary the distance between you and the hoop.

And we talked about this actually on the last episode. The reason is the schema. Remember the schema, that relationship between force and distance? Variable practice or changing a parameter like the distance you shoot a basketball enhances the schema, which means we learn better. Another concept, specificity of practice. This one's a bit tricky,

but in brief, when you practice a sports skill, you want the feedback conditions or the environment to be the same as the game. This is sort of the practice how you play thing, but it's a little bit more detailed than that. And what I mean is the feedback specifically. And I'll give you a good example of this. This goes back to my high school days. In British Columbia, where I live, they used to play the provincial basketball championships at a place called the BC Agrodome. And it was one of the few places where basketball hoops were out on freestanding supports. Most of us practice in gyms where the baskets were up against the wall.

You know, they were out a little bit, but they're up against the wall. So when you learn to shoot in that condition with the basket close to the wall, there's a bunch of visual information on that wall that helps you locate where the basket is. And as soon as it's on a freestanding support, that visual information has changed.

So specificity of practice, the feedback environment that you want to practice in should be the same as the game. We talked about this during expertise. There's the concept of deliberate practice. Basically, deliberate practice is targeting weaknesses. It's effortful. It's making sure that you follow a routine and work as hard as you can. And you can listen to the episode on expertise, but you want to embrace the concepts of deliberate practice. Basically, I like to think of deliberate practice as you're working really hard and you're working to get better on things that you don't do that well. Mental imagery, we did an episode on it,

but you should embrace mental imagery. And of course, my favorite thing, basic general brain health. Make sure you get your sleep in. Make sure you eat healthy. Make sure you hydrate. Make sure you get exercise. And of course, if you're learning a sports skill, you're getting exercise. But all those things promote better brain health. And if you have better brain health, guess what?

You learn sports skills better. So that was a bit of a grab bag of pieces, but hopefully you pulled some useful tidbits out of there about how we learn complex motor skills and things you can do to improve complex motor skills. That's all I've got on that. Hopefully you enjoyed it and hopefully it was useful. Remember, check out the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. You've got links to our Etsy store where you can buy merch. There's also links to Patreon where you can support us. Remember, none of the money goes to me.

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