The specificity of motor learning hypothesis, or specificity of learning, suggests that your ability to learn a physical or motor skill, and then perform it well afterwards, will depend on the specific practice conditions. This means that if you learned to ride by practicing with your eyes open, you won't be able to ride as well with them closed because you didn't practice with them closed. And the more you practiced with your eyes open, the harder it will be to ride with them closed. On the other hand, if you learned with them closed, you won't ride as well when you suddenly open them.
Learning is specific to the conditions of your practice in part because your body learns to use whatever information it has available at the time. When you practice, your body takes in everything it sees, hears, and feels (consciously and subconsciously) that's important to doing the skill. It takes in this sensory information and learns how to use it to tell your ankles, seat bones, and big toes when and how to move. Unbeknownst to you, practicing a skill over and over again under the same conditions teaches your body to rely on this information exclusively. So exclusively that when it disappears or changes, or when new information suddenly appears, your body is at a loss and you're left wondering why it's so hard to ride in a different saddle.
Scientists know relatively little about what happens to all of this sensory information between the time that we take it in and the time that we move our arms and legs. But they do know that if you want to learn how to do a particular skill, you need to practice it under the same conditions as you plan to perform it later on. For example, if you want to learn how to ride a training level dressage test, practicing without stirrups or on the lunge line without reins won't help because the conditions during practice are not the same as the conditions during the dressage test. The feel of stirrups on your feet and reins in your hands are critical sensory information to your brain and nervous system. The more you practice without them, the harder it will be to ride with them later on. This is because your body won't learn how to read the pressure coming from your feet and hands and use it to keep the stirrups in place and guide the horse.
Another example is that if you've always ridden with your legs too far forward, it will be hard to learn how to ride with them in the correct position. After constantly practicing under this condition (with your legs too far forward), your body has learned to detect, interpret, use, and ultimately rely on, a tremendous amount of information. It knows all about what it takes to feel your legs in this position and how to keep them there. And this will make it hard on your instructor when she tries to correct a bad habit and on you when you struggle to learn how to use new sensory information.
The only time you should make the practice conditions different from the skill you're trying to learn is when it's unsafe, abusive to the horse, or impractical. Suitable practice conditions are riding on the lunge line without reins until you're more balanced, learning to vault on and off a stationary horse, and practicing the emergency dismount when it's not an emergency.
© 1998 by Johanna L. Harris. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Johanna L. Harris has an M.A. degree in Physical Education, Exercise and Sports Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the editor/publisher of The Equestrian Athlete, a monthly newsletter providing equestrians with exercise and sport science information. You can also reach her at (800) 404-8514. |
