Motor Skills Improvement Strategies - know any?

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Hi all

So I know that the majority of the posts on here are related to social, nonverbal and ToM issues and improvement strategies, but has anyone got any ideas, resources or strategies for motor skills improvement (both fine and gross motor skills)? Despite my improvements in nonverbal communication, big-picture thinking, and ToM reasoning (not so much intuiting!) I have been told by my wife and a couple of others that sometimes my way of walking, moving to pick up an object from the floor, or other actions are awkward and even "a bit gay". They're not mean people; on the contrary, they are more concerned with what other people who don't know me might think. So they have said to me (and I believe them).

For all the challenges that AS brings, I sincerely believe that social graces are easier to learn (read Dale Carnegie cover-to-cover twice, and applied many of the learning consistently since my early 20s), then appropriate non-verbal, then executive function, then motor skills. Why? Because I don't intuitively understand when movements might appear "odd" or "gay" or whatever pejorative label. Even if you taped me and played it back for me, you would have to point out why or how it appeared so, and in several instances, for me to understand and apply it (and even then not consistently, it would just be an improvement). I wonder sometimes if some of the programs they offer stroke victims, or accident victims, might be useful. That is, if their injury or setback wasn't too debilitating i.e. they are learning to walk and talk again from virtually scratch.

Some things I have done in the past since my late teens, which may have helped somewhat (but hard to get empirical evidence on these!)

1) Fencing for 1 year - 1st year of university
2) Martial arts for 3 years (not consecutively though)
3) Lifting weights (for many years)
4) Seeing a chiropractor (for 8 years) to help with posture
5) Using one of those balancing rubber stands at the gym to see how long I could balance (difficult to explain this one in words)
6) Home improvement tasks (a bit of a catch-22 since my wife criticizes my lack of fine motor skills on these)

Are there any exercises you could recommend, maybe Youtube or other videos??
I am skeptical of paying any "expert" on improvement, as they may be full of BS; one guy who works at a gym said he understood AS, and he could show me and help me improve, but his time is $60 an hour and who knows if it would do any good.

I've been told the same. I've been told since I was young that it appeared I had a limp. Also my feet face outwards when I walk. I was able to do reasonably well at some sports and motor skills. My technique was repetition. I learned how to catch a baseball consistently by throwing a baseball against the side of a brick apartment building for an entire summer while following the precise trajectories. It took a long time for me to even hit a baseball consistently on slow pitch even. Even when I was older, the only fast pitch I could hit was a fastball -- everything else was a crap shoot even if I knew exactly where it was going.

Hell, for dancing, I may have been the 1st person to not get the "Macarena" down until I spent approx. 10 hours over three days getting the hands, hips and basic rhythm flowing together (like Napoleon Dynamite - without the nifty moves). I would not say it was time well spent.

What I force myself to do to improve my coordination, especially hand-to-eye coordination, is to play old-school video games and target shooting with my gun.

playing the piano - helps exercise both the left and right side of the brains, the left being responsible for motor coordination

preparing food for cooking - you have to learn how to fine chop ingredients to the right size, just be a bit careful

putting things together - e.g. lanterns, cupboard, chairs

fixing car problems - changing the battery, hosing, tires would require some degree of planning and motor thinking

First of all f*** what other people think! But ballroom dance or martial arts are good for gross motor, also social, confidence, mood, etc. But yeah just whatever to what other people think.

I know you already mentioned it but taking martial arts has really helped me improve my balance, coordination, posture, self-confidence... well there's actually so much it helped me with that I really can't list them all Yes, getting the movements down initially is hard (especially when they demonstrate for you and you have to do the mirror image of what they just did) but success in martial arts is determined by repetition and hard work so as long as you are willing to try over and over and over again, eventually you will get it.

If you ask me, martial arts - more specifically karate - is great for aspies since we're ok with doing the same things over and over again (or at least I am) and we can also focus on the tiny details (You get feedback like "When you punch, try to have your fist end 2 inches higher. When you turn, you should end 15 degrees from center, not 45."). I feel most people can't be bothered to care about the tiny details and the endless repetition will make them give up. There's also less peer pressure so you can learn at your own pace. I was horrible at sports and ended up always being the one to fail the team. With martial arts - unless you're competing, and you don't really need to do that - there is no team to fail so as long as you keep trying you will eventually succeed.

Martial arts for gross

For fine, learn to write and paint Chinese characters. The benefits of this have been scientifically proven. Or just download a drawing or painting book.

I totally agree with apequake, the Macarena was quite difficult for me to get down pat. I had to practice a while, and thought screw it...while my NT buddies were OK with it fairly soon after the fad broke out.

I really like Tyri0n's suggestion of writing Chinese characters - that's awesome - never thought of that!! ! However, to the best of my knowledge there is no software available on the market that compares your writing strokes to that of an authentic character as written by a native speaker. Unlike the Rosetta Stone series that can gauge your spoken intonation and pronunciation.

Martial arts seems to be a mutually agreeable approach makes me wish I stuck with it longer!!
However, I did find some of the motions to be a bit of a catch-22 at the mid-belt levels such as blue or green, i.e. I didn't have the same foundation of intuitive motor skills pre-martial arts that others had. So sometimes I would be approached by the instructor who would manually adjust me - fist about 3 inches higher and to the left, elbow tucked in...I didn't have quite the same level of physical detail orientation in my own body, as compared to my high level of detail orientation for other entities. However, this got better with practice and repetition, which I didn't mind. I was glad not to have been rejected from the group due to not having a certain level of "natural" motor skills from the get-go, they didn't seem to find me odd based on the fact that the instructor would periodically give me individual attention, I was still able to find partners for the various sparring and stretching exercises. They seem to be more accepting of people who might be somewhat odd, as compared to say a soccer or rugby team (forget those!!)

That is completely not true.

http://zdt.sourceforge.net/main/installation/

The animations for writing the characters should get you started. There's also one called Anki for Japanese -- for you anime fans out there--and I think you can find animations for writing the kanji as well, but I am not as familiar with how it works as I am with ZDT for Chinese. I also don't know if kanji is as intricate and artistic as traditional or even mainland Chinese.

Great, a constructive thread for a change!

I too loved the idea of caligraphy.

My suggestion is to play Mikado. I used to as a child, very much, and it improved my fine motor skills in ways I still benefit nowadays.

Another thing that works for me is to practise a lot, when away from others' pressure to perform. I can even get better than others at something, just need lots of practice.

I personally love martial arts. I did taekwondo for years. If you have a good teacher you can make very good improvements motor wise. I like martial arts because it's challenging but you can measure your progress by moving up. A good martial arts school that is all about the art and not sparring is good. I also highly recommend yoga too for working on motor skills.

i have motor problems too
cant play volleyball nor basketball and i cant swim for life
i can only walk, run and play badminton lol

Despite any improvements we may make in motor skills, I don't think any of us will ever be proficient at something athletic, acrobatic, or in the performing arts or whatever. Not that we would ever want to be!! although there is one exception I know of, a guy by the name of Clay Marzo who has Aspergers and is a very good surfer. You can Google him.

We're all different. With practice, I can play most sports quite well, though it's rough at the beginning. There are a few hangups I have to overcome with most of them. Well, I don't think I'd ever be good at basketball, or possibly soccer. But tennis, baseball, swimming, raquetball, football, martial arts, ping pong, and even gymnastics got to a point where I was suddenly like an NT with the parts that were difficult for me and excelling in certain other areas. In fact, most sports with eye-hand coordination I can play well; I mostly struggle with those that require a lot of body coordination simultaneously, such as basketball, though my main problem with basketball is it's 3D and I run into other players and can't process fast enough to tell where to pass the ball.

Of course, my fine motor skills are s**t in the toilet. I know lots of aspies who can draw and paint and do crafts very well. I am not one of them by a long shot.

Ok, no one has answered your original question. The reason why your motions appear a "bit gay" is probably because your butt is wiggling like a woman on high heels. (But only a bit - 'cus you are not described as a LOT gay) If the motion is subtle enough it may be hard for your family members to describe what they are seeing.

This is caused by using your hips for the walking motion instead of ALL the muscles in your legs/torso. Martial arts focus on stance and torso muscles so that will eventually teach you how to walk. Dance will do the same thing but may be more difficult to learn.

A more direct method is to research "animation walk cycles" to get step-by-step photos of normal and exaggerated walks. That will also bring up specific details of motion like:
- heel impacts the ground first
- toe leaves the ground last
- ball of foot provides "kicking" motion to transfer foot to next location
- hip on weight-bearing leg is higher then the other
- hip that is lower is "dropped" to save energy (acts like a pendulum)
- shoulders move opposite of hips to counter-balance
- arms swing BECAUSE of rotational energy provided by shoulders (not because arms are doing anything)

All these actions happen in a sequence of relaxing/tightening muscles with every step. Makes the Macarena look simple in comparison! If you want to quickly change your walk simply stomp on each step. That way you will look like an angry toddler instead of gay. (not that much of an improvement but... whatever)

If you have been walking "wrong" for your whole life then you will get very sore when you try to do it right. Google exercises for "hip flexors" and "strengthening core" to fix that.

Just chiming in to say thanks for the smile!

As a gay aspie who's very masculine & not obviously gay to others, I completely get where your family and friends are coming from when they mean gay actions. I sometimes catch myself still doing stuff like that, probably more when I'm quite tired. Overall I do it very very little (I think) compared to what I used to catch myself doing. I'm more self aware of it because I have gay aspie friends who I've noticed some of the same motor skills issues in, in particularly the way they/we sometime grasp objects in their/our hands. I recently had the thought that that may be the origin for the stereotype of the limp wristed homo. Serious