Fine Motor Skilled or Gross Motor Skilled

[Sam]

Yes, what Duane said. Dissertate brother, Dissertate!

[George Post]

oh, oh,

This could be helpful, but only if Ron uses words small enough for me to understand.

Thanks

George

[Duane Thomas]

Hey, whip out those multisyllables, baby! I'm ready.

[benos]

Now, I've got a feeling that I'm probably more naturally a gross motor skill oriented learner. I base this mostly on the fact that I've wrecked far less often riding WFO on a 500 cc four stroke than I ever did on a 125cc two-stroke.

That makes sense actually!

A gross motor skilled person could more easily handle a bigger bike than a small 125 2-stroke rocketship.

be

This thread got me thinking over the weekend, and I came up with a theory that might end up being helpful.

I will start a new thread with it to keep it cleaner there.

I got it going next door.

be

[C.A. Wason]

Regardless...I believe people ought to work on their weaknesses.

Learning to understand something you don't understand is working on a weakness. Right? (I may have misunderstood what you meant though??)

I believe we need to understand who we are, but not define ourselves by that. Does that make sense?

For example, if you a right-brained person...you don't have to limit yourself to right-brained behavior. After all, you have more than half a brain.

If I tend to do things...learn things..see things...in a certain way/perspective, then the challenge for me is to explore them from a different perspective.

Sometimes, that different perspective is what it takes to jump my thinking out of the groove it is in.

+1 "If you argue for your limitations you are sure to have them." For me if I think or say to myself that I can't do something, or do it well, I never will. Regarding fine and gross motor skills I have found that adrenaline erodes the fine motor skills more quickly. A squirt of adrenaline can be caused by the timer beeping to start the scenario, or a malfunction that interrupts the flow of a shooting sequence. I think that most people are capable of having equally good fine and gross motor skills......but many tend to practice what they do well instead of where they need to focus the training attention....on a less perfected skill. Practice doesn't make "perfect"....... perfect practice makes perfect.

[Micah]

Working with persons with disabilities, there are my thoughts:

Fine motor skills are those needed for tasks such as typing, writing, manipulating zippers/buttons/latches/switches, etc.

Gross motor skills would include moving boxes, pushing open doors, pulling out drawers, grasping large items.

In shooting sports we are required to use both fine and gross motor skills. The draw begins as a gross motor action until we begin to remove the firearm from the holster/box. Trigger control and reloading on the move are fine motor intensive.

The best way to master either set of skills is to make them automatic for your body and mind. I've used this analogy before: Remember the first months that you began to drive? There is so much shit to remember! Shifting, turn signals, manipulating the accelerator, break, and clutch, maintaining a constant speed and breaking early, controlling the wheel and adjusting for wind/rain/snow/ice/speed. Now try to remember everything that you did during your morning commute to work. Drawing a blank?

You have committed all of these fine and gross motor skills to your subconscious. Hell, you probably made a few phone calls or had breakfast along the way. All of which was automatic. Unthinking yet precise. Driving is a complicated procedure but somehow you now do it with ease.

The more you practice the fundamental skill sets required for shooting sports, the more you are storing those skills into the same part of your brain that you use when you drive. The less you have to force yourself to think during a stage, the more smooth your performance will become.

[Duane Thomas]

Ron? ....Ron?

Bueller? ....Bueller?

[Ron Ankeny]

Duane:

I typed out a reply a while back and after about 30 minutes of hitting the keyboard I realized I was just getting deeper and deeper. Also, it's kind of one of those things where I spend all day at work dealing with training/educational issues and I just want to escape when I get home.

fwiw, there was a 90 minute dissertation here that I just deleted.

So how do motor skills dictate how one should train? Here is my suggestion. If you, or the person you are trying to help, has problems with fine motor skills, consider the notion of shifting more attention to the individual task and see it through to completion before mentally and physically moving to the next task. For that matter, break a complex task into smaller chunks and work on them individually, but never lose sight of the relationship of those chunks to the whole.

30 more minutes of rambling deleted here

[Sam]

OK, Ron. Since we are only getting the Cliff's Notes version of your lecture,

If you, or the person you are trying to help, has problems with fine motor skills, consider the notion of shifting more attention to the individual task and see it through to completion before mentally and physically moving to the next task.

does this help me to understand why I used to occasionally sail magazines through the air while attempting high speed reloads?

1) Reloads, for me, are a fine motor skilled task.

2) I was not seeing the task through, to completion before mentally moving to the next task.

Makes sense.

[Flexmoney]

Y'ain't got a barber pole on ya magwell, huh?

[Duane Thomas]

If you, or the person you are trying to help, has problems with fine motor skills, consider the notion of shifting more attention to the individual task and see it through to completion before mentally and physically moving to the next task.

What instantly occurs to me is Todd Jarret's comment, "I've had great luck doing one thing at a time."

[Sam]

Y'ain't got a barber pole on ya magwell, huh?

I kept painting that stupid dot on there and it kept getting worn away. I eventually got better in spite of the paint.

[eric nielsen]

I tried & failed to paste the relevant parts of this PDF into a smaller document. In any case I think it is a lot more factual than the sources I found in Google searches, which seem to all be written by sports coaches & fitness instructors.

This is one of my fun required readings by Dr. Joanna Peris, who does neurological research for UF and occasionally gives a few lectures for lowly 1PD's like myself. If you're VERY curious, the part you want to read is pages 28 through 35.

The same illustration is used twice, p31 and p35. The left side shows Pyramidal systems and involves far few synapses, which appear as round bulbs up against Y-shaped receptors up & down the neural paths. That is associated with fine motor control. It is much simpler.

The right side [p35] shows the Extrapyramidal pathway - much more involved. That is associated with gross motor control. You could argue that a person with great gross motor control is more "coordinated" to begin with. But that is an argument.

Bear in mind that all this is an evolving science, much more remains unknown than is known, and if it wasn't for lab rats and study cases of people with brain damage, we wouldn't know any of this.

Additional_Neuro.pdf

Edited February 22, 2009 by eric nielsen

[Jake Di Vita]

Coordination, accuracy, agility, and balance are primarily neurologically controlled. It could be argued that this happens both with fine motor and gross motor control, and a deficiency in any area (whether fine or gross) will have negative effects on your performance.

[Chris iliff]

Coordination, accuracy, agility, and balance are primarily neurologically controlled. It could be argued that this happens both with fine motor and gross motor control, and a deficiency in any area (whether fine or gross) will have negative effects on your performance.

+1, and I think that a tuned practice schedule will probably help both.

[benos]

So how do motor skills dictate how one should train? Here is my suggestion. If you, or the person you are trying to help, has problems with fine motor skills, consider the notion of shifting more attention to the individual task and see it through to completion before mentally and physically moving to the next task. For that matter, break a complex task into smaller chunks and work on them individually, but never lose sight of the relationship of those chunks to the whole.

That's good advice.

What instantly occurs to me is Todd Jarret's comment, "I've had great luck doing one thing at a time."

That's a good one - that I didn't know was uttered by Todd.

A slight rearrangement on one of my favorite lines from a Carlos Castenada book - You don't know the power that comes from doing things deliberately. (The actual line has "happiness" where I have "power.")

be