Managing motor behavior is a sequence of motor responses we perform involving motor and perceptual capabilities but also affectivity, like motivations, desires, fears; i.e., our personal way of feeling and sensing skiing.
It includes two types of behaviors: the external or observable, which are movements, actions, and postures caused by our motion; and internal or experiential behavior as intentions, movement’s mental images, emotions, sensations, and perceptions. In addition, it includes our ability not only to perform but also to inhibit movements.
A form of inhibition is expressed in “motor passivity”, i.e., we sense the influence of external forces acting on us and cede by releasing muscular tension. This behavior is not only oriented to the mechanical execution of movements and actions; it exists a subconscious intention to minimize energy expenditure. For example, at the end of one turn we release the muscular tension of the outer leg to facilitate the next direction change. But to sense a body posture it is required to run a particular motor behavior; to move an arm or a leg it is imperative to perceive its initial position.
Our motor behavior management is not ultimate because it changes frequently even if we are not aware of it. Believing we ski in a certain way is just an imposed limit excluding other possibilities. While our motor behavior is improving through constant practice, we go from being limited by environmental conditions to adapt, adjust, and take advantage of these conditions to act in it.
Neuromotricity
Neuromotricity includes several brain areas in a permanent connection. The better we control our body motricity, the greater our brain capacity will be to process the information provided by the environment. It is interpreted as the provision of the nervous system to produce voluntary muscle contraction to move our body.
We use movements through muscular contractions as the only way we have to modify our skiing. Nerve impulses activated in different centers are sent to certain muscles that contract, allowing the execution of motor actions determined by movements while having directionality in our body’s spatiotemporal projection.
Slow movements can be corrected during their development but quicker ones are more difficult to do when they were already initiated due to their rapid execution and short duration. For this reason, motor planning plays an essential role in the implementation of fast movements.
Psychomotricity
It is the psychic and motor driving function allowing us to adapt to the environment.
The elements that make up our psychomotor skills in skiing are:
- Coordination
- Posture
- Muscle tone
- Balance
- Laterality
- Spatiotemporal orientation
- Body schema
- Rhythm
- Emotional control
To have psychomotor consciousness leads us to pay attention to our movements’ and actions’ exploration. It also consents developing corporal expression through sensations, movements, postures, and actions.
In the psychomotor skills, there are three important capacities we develop in our adaptation process to skiing:
- Sensorimotor skill is the sensitive uptake through sensations like movements, effort, muscle tone, balance, and posture sensations assumed in different situations. It is the first mechanism we use to adapt to the environment. This sensorimotor process begins by using sensory organs, then, the stimuli are picked up by our senses and transmitted to the central nervous system, processing the received information by sending orders through motor nerve pathways that will move our body in specific directions. Sometimes these stimuli are weak then we fail to perceive the estimated sensation. Being conscious of this capability is to be ready to capture every sensory change, being present and in contact with the environment, as well as receptive to each postural modification caused by mobility.
- The perceptual skill is the processing of sensory stimuli we are experiencing, allowing sensations organizing and giving them meaning. It includes three aspects: the perception of each one of the mechanisms forming our body schema (body orientation, balance, muscle tone, etc.); the perception of outside world sensations (spatial and temporal relations); and the perception of movement coordination in relation to objects in the surroundings to control and adjust such movements.
- The ideo-motricity is the ability to represent movement and their immediate results, i.e., the creation of the action image to be performed. It includes an earlier motor experience update to perform a new and improved motor action. It is a voluntary and conscious process of the motor action that we will perform or decline to perform.
Psychomotor parameters
Psychomotor parameters are the elements interacting with our activity such as:
- Movement, as the basic motor activity performed on an inclined and slippery surface.
- Spatiality with regard to the surrounding space occupation.
- Trajectories
- Corporal orientation and the orientation related to surrounding objects.
- Time while setting motion temporal moments, motion duration, rhythms, action, and succession of actions.
- Objects location in the environment.
- The relationship with objects we are using (poles, skis).
- The relationship with other people on the slopes.
Kinesthetic consciousness
Kinesthesia is the sensation of movement in space and it is a crucial factor required to evolve as skiers. Each one possesses an established kinesthetic consciousness and can improve it through practice. During lessons we tend to imitate the instructor or another skier in the group, but this is not enough if it is not complemented with the development of our own motor sensitivity.
The skiing mechanical movements’ execution constrains us to act against our body nature as we are trying to change our motor habits for more efficient ones, and as soon we cease to pay attention to them we return to our previous non efficient behavior. The instructor’s guidelines in this sense operate from the outside and we tend to forget it quickly, so we should examine our motor behavior from the inside and doing so we will perceive the sensation of clumsiness or harmony in our own movements and actions execution.
The instructor’s aim should be to ensure that we not only have received and understood the technical instructions but also that have sensed them through corporal experiences. Doing so we will achieve the necessary autonomy to follow our own evolution by getting to know ourselves; otherwise, will continue depending on some external influence.
