A Very Slippery Slope

What happens when you take basic movements that are normal to human motion and make them conscious cognitive actions? For example, when you consciously try to get the VMO to fire in gait or any other muscle for that matter, you are in effect creating neural confusion, which will result is disjointed movement. Movement is not a cognitive process. We subconsciously recognize patterns and they replay those patterns with whatever variations that are necessary depending on the situation. Remember flight or fright? In most activities there is not enough time to think about what you are going to do. You simply have to run the program. That is one reason why it is so important to give children a rich and varied repertoire of motor skills. If they learn basic movements during the skill hungry years then those patterns will stay with them and they will be able to recall them later when they constitute the components of athletic movements. See the big picture. Design activities that incorporate muscle synergies. Give the body movement problems to solve. Believe me the body will discover solutions. To do otherwise is to fall down a slippery slope.