Analyzing a Sport

I enjoyed the class topics of this past week. It was interesting to try and describe sports and analyze their different characteristics. In fact, this task often becomes difficult since a sport that you love often becomes a part of who you are. All the aspects of the sports become so natural and intuitive to you that you forget how important they are to the game. For a soccer or basketball player this could mean controlling the ball, for a baseball player it could mean how you swing the bat, for a runner it could mean the baton hand off. But for any of these athletes, the most important parts of the game become second nature to them. Because of this, it becomes hard for them to analyze their sport since its hard for them to realize all the parts that make it up which have become so natural to them. It is similar to how it would be hard to describe the easiest task, such as walking, because each component of walking is so imbedded in our minds that we really have to analyze it to see all the actions that make it up. What was also interesting about describing various sports was how complicated and strange each sport seemed when it is described, but when it is played it feels so natural. I guess thats how most things go. You practice all the small details of something a lot until you get really good at it. And when you are good at it, the details become second nature and you begin to forget how or why you do them and instead let your muscle memory do the work.