Lesson video

Hello there, and welcome to this lesson called Classification of skills continua from the Sport psychology: skill and ability unit.

My name is Mr. Broome.

I'm really happy you're here with me today, because you're going to learn a really important skill today, and that's being able to classify skills on something called a continua.

Now, that might be nothing to you right now, but hopefully by the end of today's lesson you'll understand that a lot more, and it's a really important first step in learning how to identify how best to practise skills to improve them.

So really useful information you're going to learn today.

Let's have a look, shall we? Okay, so by the end of today's lesson, you should be able to classify skills based on their characteristics and place them on the basic or complex and the open or closed continua.

And your keywords for today's lesson are basic skill, complex skill, open skill, and closed skill.

You're gonna learn a lot more about these in today's lesson, but if you'd like to pause the video and take a look, then feel free to do so.

Now, this is a two-part lesson.

Both parts are packed with information that you're going to need to know, and let's look to begin with at classifying skills on the basic/complex continua.

Okay, so let's just take a step back and remind ourselves, what is a skill? Here's a definition of a skill.

Now, a skill is a learned action or behaviour with the intention of bringing out the predetermined results with maximum certainty and minimum outlay of time and energy.

I wonder if you remembered that or you've heard of that before.

So it's something we learn, so it's not something we knew how to do when we were born, okay? Something we've learnt in the time since we were born.

Now, some sports or physical activities require multiple skills to be performed.

Think about the sport that you play and how many skills might be needed to play that sport.

I'm gonna give you an example here from rugby, okay? Well, rugby requires multiple skills to be performed, things such as running with the ball, passing, drop-kicking, catching, scrummaging, tackling, and offloading, and that's not the entire list.

There are all sorts of skills required to be successful at rugby.

Now, the important thing here is to note that when you're asked to name a skill that you talk about the skills that are outside of the word rugby here and that you don't just say rugby.

It's amazing how many times we've seen it down the years where people are asked to say a skill and they'll say football, but actually what they need to say off our list here is running with the ball in rugby or passing in rugby.

That's the skill from the sport.

Never just name the sport itself.

So just be careful on that one.

Now, each skill can be classified according to its characteristics.

And when we classify the difficulty of a skill, whether it's on the basic or complex end of the continua, which we'll learn about shortly, these are things you need to consider.

Are there lots of decisions to make? Is a lot of coordination required? Does it require lots of concentration? Is there a lot of information to process and is it quick and easy to learn? If you ask yourself those five questions of any skill, it will really help you be able to consider its characteristics.

Let's do it together.

Here's the skill of jogging.

Are there lots of decisions to make when you go jogging? No, not really.

You might decide the direction you're going to take or the route that you're going to take, but other than that, there's not a huge amount of decisions to make.

Is there a lot of coordination required? What do you think? Well, no, not particularly.

Jogging, you move in a forward direction.

You put one foot in front of the other, you move the opposite arm in time with the leg, and generally not a huge amount of coordination, certainly not compared to many other sports skills.

Does it require lots of concentration? Again, what do you think? No, not really.

Two people might go jogging together and they'll have a discussion about something completely unrelated to jogging, because the jogging itself doesn't require a huge amount of concentration.

Is there a lot of information to process? No, you don't need to process much information when you're jogging.

You might need to dodge somebody on the pavement or watch for the traffic when you're crossing the road, but other than that, there is not a huge amount of information to process.

Final question was, is it quick and easy to learn? Well, yes, it is quite quick and easy to learn.

You'll learn how to jog like this in the first few years of your life, okay? It's one of the first motor skills that you'll learn.

So yes, it is quite quick and easy to learn, again, considering other sports skills take much, much longer.

So this blend of characteristics where we said no to the first four questions and yes about it being quick and easy to learn means that we would classify jogging as a basic skill.

Quick check for understanding.

Which of these would you find in a basic skill? There is a list of characteristics here, and two of them would be found in a basic skill.

Which two? Is it A easy to learn; is it B, lots of coordination required; is it C, not much concentration is needed; or is it D, there's a need to make a lot of decisions? Which do you think? Remember, there are two.

Well done if you said A and C.

Basic skills are easy to learn and there's not much concentration needed.

B and D were actually the opposite of what we would expect to see with a basic skill.

Well done if you said A and C.

Let's do the same process all over again but this time focus on a different skill, and this time it's dribbling in hockey.

So are there lots of decisions to make? Yes, there are.

Are you going to keep dribbling? Are you going to pass? Are you going to shoot? How are you going to get past the opponent who's trying to tackle you? Is there a lot of coordination required? Yes, dribbling in hockey involves all your limbs and lots of different types of movement all at the same time.

Your arms and your hands are trying to control the stick, which is trying to control the ball.

Your lower limbs, your feet, and your legs are trying to move your body in the direction that you need to move in.

So the whole body is moving here.

Yes, lots of coordination.

Does it require a lot of concentration? Absolutely, yes.

To be able to dribble the ball and keep control of the ball and also think about all the other aspects with the opposition players and your teammates and so on, you're going to really need to concentrate.

You couldn't dribble the ball successfully if you weren't thinking about it.

Is there a lot of information to process? Again, yes.

Opposition players, the score, how much space you have, where are your teammates, how much time is left before the end of the game, and so on.

Loads of different things that you need to process while you think about how best to dribble the ball in hockey.

The fifth question you'll remember is is it quick and easy to learn? How quick and easy is dribbling in hockey to learn? Well, no, it's not very quick and easy to learn, okay? It takes a long time to be able to learn how to successfully dribble the ball in hockey.

What you'll notice there is that all those answers are the opposite of the answers we gave for jogging.

And these characteristics mean that dribbling in hockey is classified as a complex skill.

So what we have is jogging was a basic skill.

Now we have a complex skill in dribbling in hockey.

Hopefully you can see the difference between the two.

Just check for your understanding though.

Is this true or false? Hockey dribbling requires lots of information to be processed, and this makes it a basic skill.

What do you think? That statement is false.

Hopefully you noticed that.

Why? Well, the first part of this statement actually is correct.

Hockey dribbling does require lots of information to be processed.

Things like your teammates, the opposition, the space you have, the time you have, and much more.

However, the bit that made it a false statement was saying that it's a basic skill, because that would make it a complex skill, not a basic skill.

That's why the statement was false.

Well done if you spotted that.

Now, here is our first look at the difficulty continua.

It's not particularly spectacular.

It's a straight line, and at either end we have the words basic and complex, the two different categories.

This is how we add skills to it.

Quite simply, I've added jogging there at the basic end and dribbling the ball in hockey there at the complex end of the continua.

Now, skills are not always classified at one end or the other of the continua like the two skills we have here.

We can actually place a skill anywhere along that line.

And Aisha wants to ask you if you can think of a skill that would be classified in the middle of the continua where that purple line is with the empty space above it.

We want to add a skill right there in the middle.

So it will have some aspects of basic skills.

It will have some aspects of complex skills.

What Aisha would like you to think about is what skill would sit there in the middle? Maybe pause the video here while you think about a skill which you think might fit in the middle before I tell you the skill that I think does.

So here's my example.

I chose a penalty kick in football to sit somewhere there in the middle between basic and complex, and that's because I think it has aspects of basic skills and aspects of complex skills within the same skill, and I'll show you why.

So are there lots of decisions to make in penalty kicks? Not really, not many.

You're trying to score and you have one kick to do it in.

You don't have any decision on taking more touches of the ball.

You've just got to kick it once.

Your decision will probably be, I'm going to try and put it here in the top left-hand corner or the top right-hand corner or down the middle of the goal, but other than that, and maybe a little bit of information you have about the goalkeeper, so you might make a decision based on whether they like to go to their right or to their left, et cetera, there's not a huge amount of decision to be made, one or two at most.

And so that makes it a basic skill, doesn't it? So is it quick and easy to learn? Well, you might think, well, actually, kicking a ball can be learned quite quickly and easily.

When you think about toddlers can have a go at kicking a football, but could they score with accuracy and technique that's required from the penalty spot on a football pitch? Well, actually no, they couldn't, could they? And that takes a lot longer and a lot of years of practise to be able to do.

Is there a lot of information to process? Not really, is there? What information could you possibly need to process? You're going to kick the ball into the goal, hopefully.

The only other person involved is the goalkeeper, and you can take the kick in your own time, so you're not rushed into doing it.

So not a huge amount of information to process, which again tends to push it towards basic end.

But we can counter that by saying does it require a lot of concentration? If it was a basic skill, it wouldn't require a lot of concentration, but the high-pressure situation that you have here where you want to shoot accurately and score past the goalkeeper and make the crowd really happy makes the skill much more complex.

So what you can hopefully see there is that a penalty kick has some characteristics of a basic skill and some characteristics of a complex skill, and that's why I can justify placing it here on the difficulty continua right there in the middle.

Which skill did you come up with then, and can you justify placing it there as well? Let's check for your understanding.

Now, one of these skills would fall somewhere in the middle of the difficulty continua.

Which one do you think it would be? Is it A, the football throwing; B, the pole vault; or C, 100-meter sprinting? Well done if you said A.

The reason A would fall somewhere in the middle of the difficulty continua is because, well, are there lots of decisions to make? Mm, not really.

You have to throw the ball with the same technique.

There is a very specific technique you have to use, and that's a technique that can be learned quite quick and easily.

You know, youngsters can quite easily learn how to throw a ball with two hands like is required in a football throw-in.

So you might say, actually, that's quite a basic skill.

But does it require concentration? Yes, you need to know the movement of all the people.

And information to process, yes, you need to process all the different information of where the opposition, where are your teammates? So it is slightly more complex than we might first have said by saying actually it's a skill that's very quick and easy to learn.

Whereas if we consider a pole vault in picture B, that takes a huge amount of concentration, a lot of coordination, and many, many, many years of practise to be able to do the pole vault in the manner that the athlete is on that picture.

How about sprinting? Well, sprinting is quite a basic skill, isn't it really? A little bit like jogging earlier.

There's not a huge amount of information to process or decisions to make.

You are trying to run as fast as you can in a straight line, and that's the end of it.

Sprinting, more of a basic skill; pole vault, more of a complex skill; football throw-ins, somewhere in the middle.

So well done If you identified that.

Here's the task for this first part of the lesson.

I'd like you to draw the basic and complex continua.

Should be fairly straightforward.

Then I'd like you to consider the characteristics of the following skills that I'm about to show you and place them on your basic/complex continua.

The golf swing, a deadlift, downhill mountain biking, and kayaking, okay? Hopefully you're familiar enough with those to have a go at that.

And the third part is to write a sentence for each to justify where you placed it on the continua.

So one sentence per skill.

I'll be back in a minute to show you where I place these four skills, and I will try and justify why I did that.

But in the meantime, pause the video here and have a go at the three parts of that task.

Okay, so how might you have placed them? Well first of all, you had to draw that basic/complex continua, and how would you have placed them? Here's how I placed them.

I wonder if we're similar.

I don't expect we'll be exactly the same, but hopefully we're fairly similar.

The most basic skill is the deadlift, and I put it right at the end of the basic end of the continua.

Then I went for kayak about a third of the way along and golf swing about two thirds of the way along, and I put downhill mounting biking at the absolute complex end of the continua.

I wonder if you agree with me.

How did I justify it? Well, when you justify something, think about those five questions again.

So think about the number of decisions, the amount of coordination, the amount of information to be processed, how quick and easy it was to learn, and the amount of concentration required, okay? If we think about those five things with the deadlift, are there a lot of decisions to make? No, not at all.

There's one way to do the deadlift.

You don't have a different choice of techniques.

You just lift it.

Is there a lot of coordination required? There's some coordination, and it is important that you get it coordinated right and use the correct form, but it's not a huge amount of coordination.

Is there a lot of information to be processed? No, you're quite simply lifting a heavy bar.

There's nothing else to have to process particularly.

Is it quick and easy to learn? Yes, you could learn that technique quite quickly, okay? It is, as I said, important that you do learn the correct technique, but it could be quite quick to learn.

And does it take a lot of concentration? I'd say you do need to concentrate on it, but you probably could do the deadlift and think about something else at the same time and still be able to perform it properly.

Let's look at the other end with downhill mountain biking.

Now, are there lots of decisions to make? Well, that goes hand in hand with is there lots of information to be processed? If you are downhill mountain biking, you're on a track where the surface and the obstacles and just the nature of the race or the track is changing at every second, okay? At one point there might be a tree branch coming towards you.

The next second you might be having to dodge a rock.

At the next second you might be moving onto a wetter surface and from a dry one and so on, and everything keeps changing.

And so the amount of decisions and information are just huge, okay? Definitely puts it at the complex end.

And you could not do the downhill mountain biking without 100% concentration on what you're doing.

Coordination-wise, you need your feet to pedal, you need your hands on the handlebar ready to steer and to pull the brakes if necessary, and the rest of your body to keep balanced and move the bike and make the turns that you need to make.

And so a huge amount of coordination required.

Is downhill mountain biking quick and easy to learn? No way, not at all.

For some of us it takes years to be able to ride a bike without stabilisers or without any help in the first place, let alone being able to then ride a bike down the mountainside with all the obstacles coming towards us at high speed.

And so no, it's not quick and easy to learn at all, which absolutely justifies placing it there at the complex end of our continua.

As for the other two skills there in the middle, I felt kayaking and golf were sort of aspects of basic but aspects of complex as well.

They're not particularly quick and easy to learn.

Certainly golf takes longer to be able to perform successfully than kayaking does, and I felt that golf has more coordination required, maybe slightly more concentration as well, which is why it's closer to the complex end than kayaking is.

That's how I justify their place there in the middle.

Hopefully yours were similar to mine.

Like I said earlier, they're not going to be exactly the same, but hopefully yours were placed similar to mine and that you can justify their place, which is really important.

Don't just put them wherever you feel without being able to justify and having thought it through.

That brings us to the second part of today's lesson, which is classifying skills on the open and closed continua.

So another continua, but with different characteristics that we're looking out for.

So the open/closed continua considers how stable and predictable the environment is when the skill is performed.

What do we mean by that? So environmental factors include other people.

So do other people impact the performance of the skill, like teammates or the opposition? Is the situation always the same or is it ever-changing? Does the weather impact how the skill must be performed, and is the surface played on always the same? Think about tennis players who might perform a forehand on grass courts different than they would when they play on a clay court.

Let's use an example again, and this is shooting in football.

Some of the environmental factors we might need to think about.

So is the surface wet or dry? If that player thinks they're going to slip when they shoot because the surface is wet, they might shoot differently than if the surface was dry.

Is the player shooting with their strong foot? That might affect the performance of the skill because they'd be able to kick with more power and with more distance, and so that might really influence whether they shoot from this point on the pitch or whether they decide to try and get a bit closer.

Important environmental factors are other people, okay? The opposition here might decide to try a slide tackle or to block, or to just continue to run alongside that person before she shoots.

Whatever they do is gonna have a strong influence on whether they shoot or how they shoot.

Another environmental effect can be the weather.

It could be a strong wind blowing behind that person and she knows that if she shoots, it's gonna give the ball a little bit of extra power, or there might be a strong headwind coming from the other direction, in which case it will hold the ball up and take some of the power out of the shot, and that might impact how she decides to shoot.

Again, other people could include the goalkeeper.

If it's a great goalkeeper, shooting from this far out might be pointless because they'll make a save easily.

If the goalkeeper's not so good, you might fancy your chances of shooting from there and still getting a goal.

More people include your teammates.

So you might be about to shoot in football, but actually at the final moment you notice that one of your teammates is better placed and perhaps you'll pass or cross the ball in instead.

And finally, is this a good position to be shooting from, okay? So all those factors might have an influence on that.

Is it a good place to be shooting from? Well, you can shoot from anywhere on the pitch in football.

Your decision is whether this is the right place to be shooting from, or should you try to work yourself into a different position or give somebody else the chance to shoot? Lots of environmental factors there influencing whether or how that shot is performed.

So shooting in football is performed with multiple different influences from the environment every time.

That means it's unstable and unpredictable, okay? We don't quite know how it's going to occur every time somebody shoots in football.

Let's compare that to a second skill, which is the basketball free throw.

Now, some of the factors about the basketball free throw are that it's always taken from the same line and the same distance every time.

And no matter where in the world you go, that free throw line will almost certainly be the same distance from the basket wherever you are, and the basket height should also be the same.

Now, with a basketball free throw, the opposition cannot block you.

They can't get in the way of the shot.

And it's what we call self-paced.

That means you can shoot when you're ready.

Most players who throw basketball free throws have a little routine that they perform before they do to get themselves ready, okay? Then they throw the ball whenever they're ready.

That means they can use the same technique every time, and people will have a really well-grooved technique that they use every single time.

So basketball free throws can be performed in almost exactly the same way anywhere in the world.

That means it's very stable and predictable, the opposite, isn't it, of that football shot.

So here's the open/closed continua, and no surprises, it's a straight line with open and closed at either end.

When the environment the skill is performed in is unpredictable and unstable, we classify the skill as open.

And the opposite, we have a skill which is performed with predictable and stable characteristics, we classify that as closed.

Where would that put our two examples? I'm sure you realised that football shooting is the open skill and basketball free throw is the closed skill.

Let's check for your understanding.

Shooting in football is more unstable and more unpredictable than a basketball free throw.

What do you think? Is that true or false? That's a true statement.

Why? Because there's so many more environmental factors which influence a football shot than a free throw in basketball.

That means the football shot is more of an open skill because of that instability and unpredictability.

Second check for understanding.

Which of the following characteristics would you expect to see in a skill which is classified as a closed skill? Is it A, the same repeated action or technique every time; is it B, that it's self-paced; is it C, that the weather impacts how you perform it; or is it D, that it's performed differently every time? There may be more than one correct answer there.

Look closely.

Well done if you said that A and B, that it is the same repeated action or technique every time and that it's self-paced are characteristics you generally see with closed skills.

Here's the task for this part of the lesson on open/closed continua.

I've put an image here of a relay changeover, okay? Something I hope you're familiar with, maybe you've seen it on TV, maybe you've even done it yourself.

I put two notes on the picture.

One is a stable factor, that the relay changeover should be the same repeated action every time.

I put an unstable factor as well, that it's often performed outdoors, okay? Most athletic stadiums are open to the elements and therefore the weather may have an impact.

It might be raining, it might be dry.

What I'd like you to do is add three more factors that you can think of which will affect the stability of a relay changeover.

It could be unstable, it could be stable factors.

Then I'd like you to draw that open/closed continua and place the relay changeover where you believe it should go.

The final part of this is to write a paragraph to justify your decision on why you put it where you did on the continua.

Pause the video and complete those tasks, and I will see you in a moment with some suggested answers.

Okay, here's some things you might have said, and I've given you the image again there with the two notes that I put on the image.

What might you have said? Well, pressure from other teams. We can't see them on the image, but pressure from other teams in the race is an unstable factor.

Let's imagine a really close race.

This is the final changeover in a race which is incredibly close where all the teams are about level.

That will put huge pressure on getting this changeover correct.

Compare that to a race where this team is 20 metres in the lead, okay? Feeling a lot more comfortable and confident about their chances of success.

That added pressure from the close race might make people perform a little bit different.

They might get a bit anxious and tighten up a little bit perhaps.

Now, the changeover greatly depends on the person receiving timing their run correctly.

If they get that run incorrect or perhaps a little bit late or perhaps a little bit early, that will seriously affect how they perform the changeover and whether it's successful or not.

So the person who's receiving has a huge impact.

Now, the track that they perform it on is always the same size and shape.

Wherever you go in the world, an athletics track will be the same size and shape.

You don't need to worry about that at all, because they're always the same.

Now, we said that there are two people involved in the relay changeover, and the person who's passing the baton is also very, very important.

They must pass it accurately into the hand.

And so because we've got two people involved in this skill, it does make it a bit unstable.

Compare that to the basketball free throw where there's only one person taking the shot and they can do it exactly how they want to.

Neither of the people in the relay changeover do all the changeover by themselves.

They have to rely on somebody else getting their movements right at the same time and coordinating each other's movements at exactly the right time.

Another unstable factor might be that if it has been raining or sleet or snow, the track might be slippy, and that again might affect the way that this changeover is performed because they're running at high speeds.

So some unstable factors, some stable factors.

Let's think about the continua now.

Okay, so here's my continua, open and closed there at either end, and you can see where I've placed the relay changeover, somewhere towards the closed end, okay? Because I believe on the whole, it is a closed skill.

That's because it's a repeatable action and it should be performed in the same way every time, which means it's stable and predictable.

However, because it relies on more than one person coordinating their movements, it isn't always repeated exactly the same way, as much as those relay changeover athletes would like it to be.

There will be slight changes depending on how well they time their movements and coordinate their movements.

And there are other environmental factors such as the pressure from other teams and the weather, which does have an impact, a slight impact.

And so that moves it slightly towards the open end of the continua, and that's why I placed it where I did.

I wonder if you agree with that and whether your answer is similar.

That brings us to the summary for today's lesson.

Would you like to read along with me? So, skills can be classified on continua according to their characteristics.

The basic or complex continua considers how basic or complex a skill is according to factors such as how much information must be processed.

The open/closed continua considers how much influence is placed on the skill by environmental factors.

Skills are classified as open or closed.

Now, I hope you've enjoyed that lesson.

I hope you've learned a lot there about how to classify skills.

Now, being able to classify skills is just the start.

It's the first step in being able to identify the characteristics of a skill, which will lead you then to identifying how best to practise that skill to be able to improve it, how best to coach that skill.

So it's a really important first step in a very important process that you'll find in all sorts of sports, something which might be really useful for your future careers if that's the kind of thing you'd like to go into.

So as I said, hope you've enjoyed today's lesson, hope you've learned a lot there about the two continua, and I look forward to seeing you in another lesson in the near future.

Bye-bye.