Lesson video

Hello there, great that you could join me today for this lesson, my name is Mr. Broome, and we're going to be looking today at self-paced and externally paced continua and gross/fine continua.

This is from the "Sports Psychology: Skill and Ability" unit.

Let's go, shall we? So by the end of today's lesson, you should be able to take lots of skills and be able to place them according to their characteristics on both the self-paced or externally paced continua and the gross/fine continua.

Let's take a look a little bit more detail.

Here's lots of keywords for you to understand today, which is page one and page two of your keywords for today's lesson.

And here is our lesson structure for today.

As you can see, two different sections.

We're going to look at each of the continua in more detail, beginning with classifying self-paced and externally paced skills.

Okay, so performing some skills is completely under the athlete's control.

The performer decides when to execute the skill and the speed, the pace, or the rate at which it's performed.

These skills are classified as self-paced skills.

Here's some examples for you.

The tennis serve, the long jump, golf swing, and cricket bowling.

Think about all those four skills, and just think about who decides when to begin that.

Think about the tennis serve.

Lots of tennis players have the a small routine where they'll bounce the ball a few times, and then when they're ready, they'll make the serve.

Think about the long jump at the end of the track.

When they feel that they're ready to go and do their best performance, they set off, but only when ready.

Similarly, golf swings and cricket bowling are begun by the person who's performing the skill.

Let's take a look at this picture and consider a goalkeeper saving the ball in football.

The decision that goalkeeper had to make about when to save the ball was completely outta their control.

They can't tell the striker or the person shooting how hard to hit it or where to hit it or when to hit it, they just have to wait and find out.

So the speed, the rate, or the pace of the skill has been determined by an external factor, the person who shot in this case, and that means it's classified as an externally paced skill.

Jacob's question for you then is, "What other examples of externally paced skills are there?" I wonder if you'd like to pause a video and think of some before I reveal my answers.

Batting in cricket is an externally paced skill, tackling in football, and blocking a punch in boxing.

All three of these are determined by the person you are up against, like the bowler in cricket or the other person trying to hit you in boxing.

Check for understanding: Which of these skills are self-paced? Think about these: gymnastics vaulting, taking a rugby line out, softball bowling, or ice hockey dribbling.

Which of those four are self-paced? Wow, three of them were self-paced, I wonder how many of you spotted that.

So gymnastics vaulting, taking a rugby line out, and softball bowling are all self-paced skills.

They're all begun when a person performing a skill decides to begin it.

Izzy's question for you then, "Let's look at these two collections of skills," we've already seen all eight of them already, "Do you notice a similarity to another continua that you've studied?" So there on the left we have self-paced and on the right we have externally paced skills.

But could those skills be grouped together on a different continua and still be in the same place? So most self-paced skills are generally also closed skills for those of you who have studied closed skills already.

And most externally paced skills tend to be open skills because they are dictated by the actions of external people or factors.

So those of you who have seen an open/closed continua before, hopefully will understand what Izzy is saying there.

So here's a continua straight line with the two classifications at either end, self-paced and externally paced.

Now what I want you to remember is that some skills don't fall exactly at one end of a continua or the other.

So Aisha's question for you is, "Can you think of a skill that would be classified somewhere in between self-paced and externally paced?" Maybe this is an opportunity to pause the video while you think of an example that might fall in the middle.

How about this, sprinting? The 100-meter sprint is self-paced because the athlete decides how fast they are going to run.

It's their decision how quickly they perform the race.

However, the decision at the beginning about when to run is decided by the race starter.

You've probably seen most of the time they have a starting gun, don't they? Meaning it's not entirely at the self-paced end of the continua.

So true or false, most self-paced skills are also closed skills on the open/closed continua.

Is that true or false? That's true, why is that? Closed skills are unaffected by the environment, and this allows the athlete to perform it at their own pace and when they choose.

So most closed skills are also self-paced skills.

Here's a practise task for you based on this self-paced and externally paced continua.

Number one, draw a self-paced/externally continua.

Number two, place the following skills where you believe they should go.

And number three, write a sentence to justify why you placed the skills where you did.

It's an important skill that you can always justify.

This will come up in exam questions quite often.

Why did you place something where it is? What are the characteristics of that skill that made you put it where you did on the continua? Here's six skills for you to consider: A football throw in, running with the hockey ball, skiing in a race, pole vault, returning serve in tennis, and a pommel horse in gymnastics.

Pause a video here, fulfil all three of those parts of the task, and I'll see you with some answers in a moment.

Okay, so your continua should look something like this, self-paced and externally paced at either end.

And first of all, we place the pole vault at self-paced.

If you've ever seen the pole vault, you'll know that the person performs it whenever they're ready to.

The pommel horse.

I put the pommel horse towards a self-paced end of the continua because it certainly is begun when the person is ready to begin.

However, the nature of the skill means that you can't completely do it at your own pace because there is a certain pace that you need to keep up to manage to keep the momentum, to keep your legs moving around the pommel horse without hitting it.

And so it's not completely self-paced.

Skiing again, similarly, it's generally self-paced.

You can choose how fast you go, but certainly sometimes the conditions or the steepness of the slope, or the person that you are racing against, perhaps if it's an race, will determine the route that you have to take and the pace that you have to do it at.

The football throw in comes somewhere in the middle of self-paced and externally paced.

Certainly, you take the throw in when you choose to, but it might be that an external factor, such as the movement of one of your teammates into space might decide for you when you need to take it.

So you could choose to take it exactly when you want to, but actually external factors do have an influence, a big influence actually.

And so it's somewhere in the middle.

How about dribbling the ball in hockey or running with the ball in hockey? That's certainly impacted by a lot of external factors, namely the opposition players and your teammates.

Their movements, their communication with you, their position on the pitch.

That will certainly have an impact on how quickly you play the skill.

And when you begin the skill generally is decided again by all those different external factors.

But you still have some control over how fast you perform the skill and therefore it's not entirely externally paced.

The final of our six skills was the return of tennis serve.

This, a little bit like a goalkeeper, having somebody shoot the ball at them, is very similar, isn't it? Because the person who serves the ball at you, that's certainly self-paced, but you don't have any say in when you can return the ball back to them.

That is completely decided by an external factor as in the opposition that you're playing against.

And so it's absolutely at the externally paced end of the continua.

Well done if you've placed your skills somewhere similar, but in particular, that you justified where you did so based on what determines the start of the skill and what determines the speed or the rate or the pace of the skill for each of those six skills.

Onto our second section of today's lesson, and that's classifying gross and fine skills.

Let's compare two skills, a table tennis serve and the high jump.

Table tennis serve requires fine movements of the wrist and the fingers to make the ball spin.

This is classified as a fine skill.

We'll look in a little more detail in a moment.

Whereas the high jump requires explosive muscular power from large muscle groups to jump over the bar.

And that means it's classified as a gross skill.

So Laura's question is, "What characteristics distinguish fine skills from gross skills?" And we may have learned some already from those two examples.

So fine skill characteristics, you will see small movements, you will see that precision is required and accuracy and coordination.

And generally, it involves small groups of muscles making those small movements.

At the other end of the scale then, we have gross skills.

Gross skills are large movements, powerful and strength is required.

And they use large groups of muscles, as with our high jump example where the leg muscles propel the body over the bar.

So a quick check for understanding: Which of these shows a gross skill being performed? Is it A, the basketball dribbler, B, the snowboarder performing a trick, or C, darts? Well done if you spotted that A and B were gross skills, whereas C is not.

C is a fine small movement using just some small muscles to throw the dart, whereas A and B certainly are using large muscle groups, require a lot of power.

Quick check for understanding.

Which of the following characteristics matches with fine skills? Is it a large movements? Is it B, precision required? C, small groups of muscles are used? Or D, large groups of muscles are used with a fine skill? Well done if you spotted that B and C, the requirement of precision, and that small groups of muscles are used are associated with fine skills, whereas large movements and large groups of muscles would be a growth skill.

Okay, we should be familiar with the idea of these continua.

Now, at one end we have gross and at the other end we have fine.

And Sam says, "Some of these don't seem to be in the right place" to Sam.

And my question is, do you agree with her, or maybe you think that some of the skills are in the right place? Which skills, if any, are in the wrong place? Your task is to draw the gross/fine continua and position those three skills, rowing, archery and diving, where you believe they should be.

Write a sentence afterwards to justify your placings, this is the important skill.

You need to tell us why the skills characteristics led to it being placed on the continua where you did.

Pause the video here, complete those tasks, and then you'll see me in a moment with some answers.

Okay, this is where I would place those three skills on the gross fine continua, and I'll justify why right now.

So rowing and diving are both skills which involve large muscle groups.

They're performing powerful movements and therefore they're gross.

Diving is perhaps arguably a little bit more about accuracy and precision 'cause you have to really hit the water in a particular point, in a particular body position, so it's slightly finer than rowing perhaps, but it is definitely a gross skill.

Now, archery involves some really fine finger movements and it's all about precision and accuracy.

And so this skill ends up at the fine end of the continua.

Okay, now here's a summary for today's lesson on self-paced/externally paced and gross/fine continua.

So, skills can be classified according to their characteristics.

And in total, there are four skill continua we use to classify skills.

And in today's lesson, we discovered that the self-paced/externally paced continua considered who decides when the skill begins and who controls the speed or pace of it determines where you place a skill along that continua.

The gross/fine continua considers how much muscular involvement is required to perform the skill and how precise or accurate the desired outcome is.

Well done for your work in today's lesson.

I hope you enjoyed it and learned lots about these two continua, remembering to always justify a skill's place along each according to their characteristics.

Hope to see you in another lesson in the near future.