ABSTRACT
The Sands Point Movement Study Group first discovered pre-efforts in the course of studying efforts, part of the system of movement analysis identified by Rudolf Laban. Laban defined efforts as movements that effectively respond to environmental forces of space, weight, and time, figuratively and literally. Janet Kestenberg Amighi and K. Mark Sossin labelled them as developmental precursors of efforts, or pre-efforts, and set about to identify their qualities. Kestenberg Movement Profile analysts define pre-efforts as those movements that use an inner focus on muscle tension to attempt to control how a movement will be executed as well as an outer orientation on the task at hand. Using pre-efforts is common in learning new tasks because learning how to move in a new way involves inner concentration as well as outer awareness. Thus, pre-efforts are developmental precursors of efforts, used in the service of learning, and, finally it was discovered, used as motoric counterparts of an individual's defence mechanisms.
