Discuss the differences between skill, ability and technique and explain how you would structure practices to enhance these components of fitness.

AS and A Level Physical Education (Sport & Coaching)

Jatin Patel. 26/1/04

Skill is an athlete’s ability to choose and perform the right techniques at the right time, successfully, regularly and with a minimum of effort. Athletes use their skill to achieve athletic objectives e.g. sprinting 10.0 seconds in a 100m race. Skill is acquired and therefore has to be learned. Techniques are the basic movements of any sport or event e.g. at the block start in a 100m race is a technique. We combine a number of techniques into a pattern of movement e.g. the triple jump-running and then the hop, skip and jump phases. Ability is the make up of an athlete which we inherit from our parents. Abilities underpin and contribute to skills. They can be essentially perceptual, essentially motor or a combination of both. Most abilities to do with action are a combination and are preferred to as psychomotor abilities. At the present time there is no definitive list of psychomotor abilities.

In skill, there are a number of key qualities needed in order for a performance to be skilful such as consistency, accuracy, control, fluidity and an intention. There are four different types of skill and they are: - cognitive skills, perceptual skills, motor skills and perceptual motor skills. Cognitive skills involve thought processes such as the measure of a length of a long jump. While perceptual skills involve interpretation of information. Motor skills involve movement and muscular control such as walking or running. Perceptual motor skills involve thought, interpretation and movement, an example is:-

See Interpret Think Move

To be able to perform a skill, people require abilities. You may have developed abilities when you where young or u could have inherited it through yours genes. Without good abilities, you may never be able to perform a skill that you try or have tried. Examples of specific abilities required in sport would include: hand/eye co-ordination, flexibility and speed. These abilities ...

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See Interpret Think Move

M.L. Stallings (1982) identified the following psychomotor abilities: muscular power and endurance, flexibility, balance, co-ordination and differential relaxation (selective adjustment of muscle tension). While A.E. Fleishman (1972) identified the following nine psychomotor abilities (referred to as gross motor abilities): extent flexibility, dynamic flexibility, explosive strength, static strength, dynamic strength, trunk strength, gross body co-ordination, gross body equilibrium and stamina. If you are of average height, strong, good co-ordination and have an abundance of fast twitch fibres in your legs then you have the natural ability to be a sprinter.

So in gymnastics, a person would have to have the natural ability i.e. be quite flexible and would have to learn the correct techniques before they can actually perform a certain skill. A skill would be doing a front flip. To structure practices to enhance your performance for agility is very difficult as you are born with your abilities. However an Australian sports psychologist has found ways of improving hand/eye co-ordination by doing some special eye exercises. These exercises are static exercises e.g. passing drills in hockey. Technique is very important for an athlete. Technique is often confused with skill but they are different things. In order to perform a particular skill in any sport we must learn the required technique and for the technique to be mastered we must have abilities:

Ability + Technique = Skill

To enhance skill, ability and technique practice is needed as many people say ‘practice makes perfect’, but perfection may not occur but an improvement can. The type and appropriateness of the practice will influence the skill development. As discussed earlier, different types of classifications of skill require different learning environments. Fixed practice involves repetition of an activity. This allows the skill to become ‘over-leaned’ so the learner will know it on the top of the head. Fixed practice can be boring but the repetition will allow movement patterns to be a fixture of you. This is an ideal practice for skills. A golfer practising putting is an example as it is a closed, interactive and coactive skill. By variable practice, it involves applying the skill to a number of different environments in practice which means your development will increase of the skill. This is an open and interactive skill. An example would be beginning with a football and moving it from side to side on the spot, then at a walking pace, then running and finally adding defenders. Another example is dribbling in hockey.

Those are the two types of practice but they can be organised in two ways. One way is by distributed practice, where it involves the division of a practice session down into segments with resting periods where feedback can be given. The overall concept is to have breaks in between the segments during which the activity may be changed and feedback given and the next activity explained. This practice is good for those with less experience and lower levels of fitness as they allow extrinsic feedback so the coach can help improve the performance of the performer. The other practice is massed practice sessions which involves a continuous sessions with no breaks. Mainly for experienced performers with a high level of fitness and mostly associated with fixed practice. This allows skills to be tested under fatigue conditions and they receive intrinsic feedback where the performer feels the difference within them. Circuit training is an example for a shooting session in basketball.

Other aspects are used such as Pacing. It is where externally paced skills can be learned and perfected as self-paced skills and then gradually external pacing can be introduced. Technique will be developed without time pressures. Once the correct technique can be reproduced without difficulty, external pacing influences can then be introduced. Serial/Discrete skills are low organised skills that can be practised in parts and then linking together but preferably progressively, this allowing links to be developed between each part. An example would be to do a handstand, forward roll, cart wheel in gymnastics as it is a link.

Bibliography:-

I got most of the information from Advanced P.E. for Edexcel and some form the internet.