Introduction to Motor Preferences in Baseball
The Motor Preference Approach to Training and Performance Optimization: What exactly is it?
First of all, to understand Motor Preference Approach, it is important to prioritize the 4 priorities of the human body:
1) Having enough energy to live
2) Being able to stand to perceive and act on the environment
3) Controlling movement through emotions
4) Move as efficiently and effectively as possible
This prioritization makes it possible to discuss the means to be implemented, to discuss with the athlete and to make sure that his resources, his organization of life are in correlation with his objectives. For example: if the organization of an athlete's life does not allow him to recover sufficiently from training and if he is already very tired physically, it will be necessary to modulate his performance objectives by adapting them to the means at his disposal.
In a second step, the notion of time is added. An athlete has a past, a present and a future.
- An athlete's history is important because motor preferences exist from birth. It is also essential to know his injuries, his training methods, etc.
- His present corresponds to the potential available in his strengths: Can my athlete still improve in his strengths or is he at the end of his strengths and should he start a differentiated work?
- And his future: These are his goals, which are determined by the athlete's body but also by the environment (playing soccer is not the same thing as running a marathon). Thus baseball offers us a complex environment that must be at the heart of the approach because it imposes itself on the players. Everyone must be able to understand and analyze this environment to be able to express themselves as well as possible.
Now that these notions have been introduced, let's focus on motor skills preferences. Motor skills preferences are encoded (we don't know yet if it is genetic or epigenetic) in our body for life and optimize its survival. It is possible to begin to identify them simply by looking at the morphology of the players, the type of posture they adopt, their walking, running, how they behave on the field. From these observables, we can bring the notion of aerial or terrestrial profile. These profiles will have to be confirmed by interaction tests (assessment) carried out by a professional.
But before discussing the aerial and terrestrial profiles (later article), I invite you to do a small test that you can do at home to better understand the notion of motor preference. Cross your fingers as in the picture. Observe which thumb is above the other. Maybe it will be the right thumb, maybe the left thumb.
In both cases, it is not bad or good, it is just the result of a natural movement, which did not require you to concentrate, nor a lot of energy and which you realized very quickly and easily,
Now I'm going to ask you to separate your hands and cross them again. But this time you must reverse the thumbs. So if the right thumb was on top, it should be underneath, vice versa. Same for the left thumb.
Is it that simple and easy? Did it require more concentration? Is it as comfortable? The answer can be modulated, but it will tend towards ''no''!
The movement you just made is a motor skill preference (not a habit). Now let's imagine that you have to do the world championships of ''fingers cross''. In your opinion, which version of the 2 gestures you have just done will be the most effective: The natural one or the one that induces constraint? Of course the natural gesture is the best to perform.
The motor preference approach scientifically proves if you have a natural gesture that is efficient and fast, that does not require minimal energy expenditure, it is that it corresponds to the best coordination of your body. It is therefore a priority to work with your motor preferences to optimize each technical gesture, for physical and mental preparation, to anticipate and avoid injuries.
An athlete will perform better if he uses his natural strengths rather than being constrained. I'm not saying that an athlete who is forced to perform a technical action (in addition to the imposition of the environment) will not become a performer. If he is adaptable, if the proposed exercises correspond to his motor preference profile and if he has time, it will work. However, the chances of such a match are very small: statistically 50% of the population has either an aerial or a terrestrial profile. When we add variables such as: a motor shoulder, an extension leg, a flexion leg, support preferences, a motor eye, respiratory chains, an introversion and extroversion muscle chain, etc., the chances of having this match are very small. Understandably, this is still unlikely!
Interactive assessments of motor preferences help identify how the athlete's body likes to move naturally. This makes it possible to prioritize training methods and technical gestures adapted to the athletes' profile, which will optimize their performance while respecting the 4 priorities of the body, their past, their present, their objectives and the baseball environment.