Motor Behavior Lab

In my motor behavior lab, we are learning a lot of really cool things and doing a lot of fun experiments. One of the cool things we did on thursday was working with goal setting and how it is shown to beneficial for performing and learning motor skills. We learned that research has shown that the most effective goals are those which are high, yet attainable. The task we were working with for the goal setting lab was speed stacking. I was excited to try that because it was a game I have never done.

For the lab, our teacher had us do a pre-test and it was timed so we would know what time we got. From there, he passed out slips of paper and told us what type of goal we had. There were 3 different goals: Hard , Medium, and Do Your Best. For hard, you took your pre-test time and multiplied it by .3 and that was your goal time you wanted to get. For medium, you multiplied it by .5, and for do your best, and did exactly that. We then had 10 minutes to practice cup stacking and after that we had our post test. The results were very surprising. The hard goal group improved by 42%, the do your best group improved by 45$, and most notably, the medium group increased by 55%.

This lab is very relevant in a physical education setting because we want all of our students to set goals but we also want them to achieve those goals. We don't want our students getting burned out or losing motivation chasing an unattainable goal. This lab is a benefit to all physical educators and coaches too because goal setting is extremely important.

Check out this awesome video on speed stacking!