Poulton’s continuums
Every sport consists of a variety of skills. Skill isn’t necessarily just performed discreetly, as they can be continuous or in series. To define skills we can place them along continuums. Continuums are used to grade skills in more detail. They are also extremely useful from a coaching point of view as it allows the athlete to be familiar with different skills and use them in the correct environment or situation. For example a sprinter may have to run along a wet surface and if they are only used to dry surfaces they may not perform aswell as they could.
Gross and fine skills
Gross skills, such as jumping for a header in football, involve large muscular movement whereas fine skills, like putting a golf ball consist of intricate muscular movement.
Fine skills are usually associated with:
- speed
- accuracy
- efficiency
Gross skills are associated with:
Open and closed skills
Open skills tend to be carried out in sports that need a lot of thinking and decision-making. It is a skill, which usually occurs within an unpredictable environment. However closed skills are not affected by the environment and have predictable outcomes as they are said to be predominantly habitual.
Externally And Self-Paced
When a skill is self paced it is the ability to control the rate of action an athlete may wish to perform at. However when a skill is externally paced the athlete is reacting to either their surroundings or environment, the performer isn’t in control of the pace. Externally paced skills can be affected by several factors such as the weather or wind conditions. The opposition is also a factor in that they may be in control of the play and therefore they are self-paced.
As you can see yachting is more externally paced than weight lifting because it has stronger variables such as the weather and wind, whereas the athlete controls weightlifting and doesn’t involve any environmental factors.
Discrete, Serial and Continuous Skills
Some skills have a clear beginning and end. We call these discrete skills, as they are a single skill. If a set pattern of discrete skills are placed together one after another a serial skill is created. Further more are continuous skills which cannot be split into subroutines or easily distinguished into stages.
As illustrated above on the continuum high jump is more serial than discrete or continuous. The reason being it consists of many skills such as running, jumping, stretching etc.
Simple and Complex skills
If a skill can be easily performed with very few subroutines and minimum concentration it is known as s ‘simple’ skill. Logically, if a skill is harder to perform, needs a lot of time and attention to perfect with many interlinked subroutines it is called a ‘complex’ skill.
Individual, Coactive and Interactive skills
Interactive skills are those that are performed when the environment or other athletes are involved. Whereas coactive skills are carried out at the same time as other performers either individually or as a team. Individual skills take place when a single athlete is performing alone.
As previously mentioned the advantage of using Poulton’s continuums is to define skills in great detail which in turn allows teaching different types of skills within their correct environment or situation they will occur in. This allows the athlete to become as prepared as they can be for their event although they do have their disadvantages. For example they can vary due to the type of environment, such as the type of surface, weather or even how experienced the athlete is. It can be argued that as a performer becomes better at a skill they will begin to, unknowingly begin to inter-link one skill into another. As most skills are interlinked they can be illustrated as a profile, shown below;
A Skill profile of a Netball standing shot:
Each line represents the previous continuums mentioned earlier. However, a major criticism regarding profiles is that it will vary from athlete to athlete depending on their ability. For example a professional netball player will find many of the skills far easier with experience and practise. A typical skill profile for an elite netball player could be shown as below:
As you can see the more experienced athlete would find the skill far easier to do due to the sheer practise they have had. Another criticism is that the more advanced athletes will be able to control their pace within a game situation, much better than an amateur will.
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