Introduction
Motor learning comprises all processes of acquisition, maintenance and modification of primarily motor, but also sensory and cognitive structures. The goal is to improve all movement coordination in sports motor skills, everyday and work motor skills. Walking, running, jumping and throwing are motor skills that have been automated in the course of a person’s development.
If you reach for a glass to drink, you don’t have to worry about how to coordinate your movements so that your hand is in the right position and uses adequate force. However, such motor skills, like all other motor movements, must first be learned, stabilized and automated. All these movements, which are unconsciously controlled by different centers in the CNS (Central Nervous System), are called movement skills.
Motor Learning and Central Nervous System
The origin of every movement lies in the CNS (Central Nervous System). Individual impulses are transmitted to deeper centers of the nervous system in the form of action potentials. A switch in the spinal cord causes the transmission via the alpha-motoneuron to the motor end plate.
This initiates a muscle contraction. The improvement of athletic movement is thus due to change processes in the CNS. Movement templates are created in the cerebellum which serve to coordinate body movements.
This enables the athlete to correct the movement while it is still being performed and to reprogram possible evasive actions if the performance level is increased. Exceptional cases are movements that are executed faster than 200ms. Since these movements are faster than the signals can be transmitted in the CNS, control processes during the movement sequence are no longer possible.
Ontogenesis (motor development)
Ontogenesis deals with a functional network of physiological, neurophysiological, morphological, conditional, coordinative, psychomotor and motor processes in the lifelong development of humans. Questions concerning motor development with regard to the best learning age for special technique, tactics or conditioning training can be answered on the basis of ontogenesis. This topic might also be of interest to you: Movement education
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