# Balance Training: Toward a Comprehensive Understanding and Application of the Overload Principle in Motor Skill Acquisition

## TL;DR

Training with higher difficulty balance tasks improves performance on easier, untrained balance tasks, supporting the overload principle in motor skill learning.

## Contribution

Demonstrates that high-difficulty balance training enhances transferability to lower-difficulty tasks, validating the overload principle in motor skill acquisition.

## Key findings

- High-difficulty training group showed significant positive transfer to lower-difficulty balance tasks.
- Low-difficulty training group did not show transfer to higher-difficulty tasks.
- Both groups improved in their specific trained conditions, supporting the specificity principle.

## Abstract

The effect of the overload principle in motor skill acquisition is unclear. Hence, the present study examined the effect of the overload principle in general, and in particular how the overload principle can be used to increase transferability to nontrained balance tasks with a high level of similarity at different levels of difficulty. A total of 24 participants were randomly assigned to two training groups: (1) low‐difficulty training group and (2) high‐difficulty training group. Both training groups completed five training sessions consisting of 25 trials over three weeks and only the level of difficulty of the balance board differed. Both the low and high‐difficulty training groups had a significant improvement in balance performance in the specific trained conditions, which supports the specificity principle. Most interestingly, only the high‐difficulty training group showed significant positive transfer to balance tasks with lower levels of difficulty. The low difficulty training group did not show significant positive transfer to balance tasks with higher levels of difficulty. These findings support the effect of the overload principle. In conclusion, the present findings demonstrate the superior effect of task‐specific balance training, and, most interestingly, the study revealed that training with overload at higher levels of difficulty enhances transferability to similar tasks performed at lower difficulty levels.

The application and effect of the overload principle remain relatively under‐examined in the motor‐skill acquisition literature overall and particularly within the context of balance training.The present experiment explicitly aimed to answer the question about the effect of the overload principle on balance training and whether the overload principle can be used to increase transferability of balance to similar nontrained tasks of lower levels of difficulty.The experiment consisted of two groups: (1) high‐difficulty training group (HDTG) and (2) low‐difficulty training group (LDTG). Only the HDTG showed positive transfer to other balance tasks with lower levels of difficulty, whereas the LDTG did not induce positive transfer to balance tasks with higher levels of difficulty.

The application and effect of the overload principle remain relatively under‐examined in the motor‐skill acquisition literature overall and particularly within the context of balance training.

The present experiment explicitly aimed to answer the question about the effect of the overload principle on balance training and whether the overload principle can be used to increase transferability of balance to similar nontrained tasks of lower levels of difficulty.

The experiment consisted of two groups: (1) high‐difficulty training group (HDTG) and (2) low‐difficulty training group (LDTG). Only the HDTG showed positive transfer to other balance tasks with lower levels of difficulty, whereas the LDTG did not induce positive transfer to balance tasks with higher levels of difficulty.