Baseball Trivia: Which Type of Practice is Better?
Here is a fun piece of trivia for today:
A college level baseball team is split up into two groups who perform two extra batting practice sessions per week over a 6 week period. Each group practices hitting 45 pitches per session and has the same number of pitch types.
Group 1 is given the pitch types in a specific order which will will call block form (i.e. 15 fastballs, followed by 15 curveballs, followed by 15 change-ups).
Group 2 is given the same number of pitch types, but in randomized sequence (i.e. 1 curve ball, 2 fast balls, 1 change up etc.).
After the 6 weeks, which group performed best on all pitch types????
If you went with conventional wisdom, you might have thought group 1, or the block group. After all, this is how we typically practice skills isn't it? We spend 20 minutes of practice shooting free throws over and over, or kicking the ball into the upper left side of the goal, or performing a give and go pass from one spot on the ice.
Interestingly, it was not group 1 that performed better, it was group 2! In fact, group 2 improved their skills by 56.7%, while group 1 only improved by 24.8%... That is more than double people!!
If you want to know more about the study and how it might apply to studying for your CPT exam, read on!
This was an actual study performed by Kellie Hall and colleagues at California Polytechnic State University. Through other research, we had observed this phenomenon in unskilled athletes, or novices. This was one of the first studies, however, to observe this effect in elite level athletes.
The experiment was performed on the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo baseball team. In addition to the two experimental groups mentioned above, they included a third control group which did not attend the extra batting practices. This third group improved only 6.2%, compared to groups 1 and 2 (24.8% and 56.7%, respectively).
Hall, Kellie Green, Derek A. Domingues, and Richard Cavazos. "Contextual interference effects with skilled baseball players." Perceptual and motor skills78.3 (1994): 835-841.
Critical Thought Question: Why do you think this phenomenon exists? Think back to a time when you were practicing a skill, didn't it feel more gratifying when you practiced a skill over and over until you nailed it?
How does this apply to passing my CPT exam?
Because I am not one of those inherently fast learners, on the contrary, I tend to be on the polar opposite of the scale, I have had to spend quite a bit of time learning how to study. If not for learning how to learn, my multiple personal trainer certifications, Bachelor's Degree, and Masters Degree would have been impossible! Thus, I have put together the most powerful learning strategies to help you pass your exams. .
Block Practice vs. Interleaving Practice
In learning, application of block practice still tends to be the consensus. An example of Block Practice would be, reviewing only the anatomy of the legs until you have it down, then moving on to the anatomy of the arms.
If one looks at the learning research over the several years, however, block practice proves to be much less effective than Interleaving practice. Mast practice is much more gratifying and accepted because we gain the perception that we have learned a lot during the study session. In study after study, however, it has been demonstrated that Interleaving Practice results in much better learning. In fact, a recent study in 2009 by Kelli Taylor and Doug Rohrer found that when children practiced four kinds of mathematics problems, in either blocked practice or interleaving practice, the latter doubled scores on a test given one day later. Worth mentioning, is that the practice performance of the interleaving group was impaired. This is probably why we don't tend to like this type of practice, because in the moment, it seems that we are not learning very much...
Taylor, Kelli, and Doug Rohrer. "The effects of interleaved practice." Applied Cognitive Psychology 24.6 (2010): 837-848.
Rather than studying one thing at a time before moving on to the next topic, study a variety of topics in one study session. For example, study the anatomy of the leg, the arm, and maybe even the nervous system during one session. It may feel less efficient, but you will be pleasantly surprised the day of the exam!
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