Interactive skills are skills in which an opponent can physically inhibit a player’s performance. Football is an interactive sport as two teams share the pitch and body contact is allowed.
Football
Figure Skating 50m Swim Tennis
Individual Coaction Interaction
Although football and tennis are both interactive sports, there is a greater level of interaction in football, as in tennis there are segregated areas of play, for each player.
Body involvement continuum, this classifies the muscle group size used, amount of body used and precision needed for a skill. The scale goes from the fine to the gross extreme.
Fine skills require specific parts of the body making small precise movements in order to carry out a task. Fine skills require a high degree of hand-eye co-ordination, arm and hand steadiness and considerable perceptual abilities. Eg. rifle shooting, as a small muscle group is used and the movement is very précised.
Gross skills consist of large muscle groups resulting in movement of the whole body. They are not very precise and include many of the fundamental movement patterns, like walking and jumping. Eg. a tennis smash.
Tennis smash (interactive skill)
Rifle shooting (individual skill) Football penalty (interactive skill) Front crawl (coactive skill)
Fine Gross
Continuity continuum, which is based on the beginning and end points of a movement in a sporting activity. At either end of the continuum, there are continuous and discrete skills, and in the middle serial skills.
Continuous skills do not have a distinct beginning or end. In theory continuous skills are continued for as long as the performer wishes, as the end of one cycle automatically becomes the beginning of the next. Eg. swimming.
Discrete skills unlike continuous skills do have a clear beginning and end. The skill can be repeated, but the performer “starts again”. Eg. a football penalty, as the skill begins when the player starts his run up and ends when the ball has left his foot, so there is a clear beginning and end.
Serial skills are a group of discrete skills performed together to produce an integrated more complex movement. Eg. a gymnastics routine, each part of the routine itself, eg somersault or back flip, is a discrete skill, but when they are merged together to form the routine, it becomes a serial skill.
Swimming alone (individual skill)
Tennis rally (coactive skill) Gymnastics routine (individual skill) Football penalty (interactive skill)
Continuous Serial Discrete
Pacing continuum, which refers to the degree of control a performer has over a sporting action, and the extent to which they can decide when to start the action. The two extremes of the continuum are self-paced and externally paced skills.
Self-paced skills are where the performer has all the control of a skill, the start and the timing. Eg. a tennis serve, as the player decides when to start the movement and how fast to perform it.
Externally paced skills are where the performer has little or no control over a skill, and either an opponent or what is happening elsewhere in the environment determines the timing and form. Eg. a rebound off the post in football, as the player doesn’t have control of when a rebound occurs or at what speed.
Tennis serve Swimming dive in a race Rebound off the post in football
(interactive skill) (coactive skill) (interactive skill)
Self-paced Externally paced
Environmental requirements continuum, this is based on the nature of the environment in which a task is being performed and refers to the extent to which the conditions will affect performance. At either end of the continuum there are open and closed skills.
Open skills occur in an environment that is constantly changing, affecting performance. The changing of environment results in open skills being needed by a performer as there is uncertainty in what will happen next, and rapid decisions about what to do and when to do it are needed. Eg. a football tackle, as not only can the whether and pitch condition affect performance, but there is also uncertainty to which way an opponent will turn, so snap decisions need to be made.
Closed skills take place in a stable, predictable environment, so the performer knows in advance what to do and when to do it. Eg. a tennis serve, as the tennis player practices the movement to try and get it perfect, so when it is performed it is in the player’s own time, and they simply repeat the movement they have practised.
1500metre swim (coactive skill)
Football tackle (interactive skill) Tennis serve (interactive skill)
Open Closed
These continuums, which help us to classify skills are very useful to coaches and performers. A coach is able to access the correct requirements of a performer. Then if a skill is classified it can be specially targeted with specific training methods to enhance to a higher level through correct practice of teaching. A coach is able to teach new skills used in open activities more effectively, by teaching them in a closed environment and then gradually bringing them into an open environment.
Also through the use of these continuums a coach can identify the appropriate types of practice conditions required easier, eg whole, part, massed or distributed. It will also be easier for a coach to detect and solve any problems the learner may be facing. A coach is also able to select the appropriate starting point for a learner, by looking at the different continuums and the level of different skills a learner already has, so time is not wasted teaching the learner skills they already know. Coaches can also look at the continuums to access performance so the correct feedback can be given to the performer so they know what types of skills they need to focus on and perhaps train harder at to make a difference to their overall performance in a sport. Finally a coach is enabled to generalise across groups of skills and apply major concepts, theories and principles of learning types of skills.
Bibliography.
- “Applying Psychology to Sport” Barbara Woods.
- “Advanced Studies in Physical Education and Sport” Paul Beashel and John Taylor.
- “Physical Education and the Study of Sport” Bob Davis, Ros Bull, Jan Roscoe and Dennis Roscoe.
- “Sport and PE, a complex guide to advanced level study, second edition” Kevin Wesson, Nesta Wiggins, Graham Thompson and Sue Hartigan.
Rob West
