Lesson video

Hello there, Mr. Broome here with a lesson on the difficulty and environmental continua, something you might be familiar with if you've looked at other types of classification of skills continua.

This is from the sport psychology: skill and ability unit, a really useful lesson as you may know already that being able to classify skills is an important first step in then being able to help somebody to improve how they perform those skills.

So let's start taking a look at how we might classify skills on these difficulty and environmental continua.

Okay, so by the end of the day's lesson, you should be able to classify skills based on their characteristics and then place them on the environmental and the difficulty continua.

More on that coming up.

And here are your keywords for today's lesson.

There are four of them, simple skill, complex skill, open skill, and closed skill, phrases you'll be learning a lot more about as the lesson progresses, but have a look if you wish to.

So two-part lesson, but both parts are quite a lot to cover, and so we are looking at, first of all, classifying skills on the difficulty continua.

All right, so let's take a step back and think what is a skill first and foremost.

Well, it's a learned action or behaviour.

This is something you couldn't do when you were born but you've learned how to do it ever since, okay? And there are dozens of things which you could call skills that you didn't know when you were born, but now you can.

Some sports or physical activities require multiple skills to be performed.

Maybe the sport that you play requires lots and lots of different skills to be performed.

Let's have a look at an example with rugby.

So some of the skills required to play rugby are running with the ball, passing the ball, drop kicking, catching, scrummaging, tackling and offloading, and those are just some of the skills.

There are many more, okay? What's important to note here is that rugby is the sport, but all those skills around it are the specific skills needed to play rugby.

That means if you're ever asked to give an example of a skill, you shouldn't just say rugby or whatever sport you can think of.

You must talk about the skill from within the sport.

So give an example of a skill from rugby.

Passing in rugby is an example of a skill.

That would be fine, but just saying rugby wouldn't be enough.

So just be careful on that one.

Now, each skill could be classified according to its characteristics, and we're interested right now in classifying how difficult a skill is.

So when we're classifying the difficulty of a skill, we need to consider five things.

Are there lots of decisions to make when we do the skill? Is a lot of coordination required? Does it require a lot of concentration? Is there a lot of information to process, and is it quick and easy to learn? If we answer those five questions, we'll know a lot more about the skill and its characteristics and be able to classify it.

Let's have a look at an example.

Let's do jogging together.

So jogging, let's ask those five questions back again.

Are there lots of decisions to make when we go jogging? What did you think? No, not particularly.

We don't need to make lots of decisions when we're jogging, generally which direction we're heading in and off we go.

Is a lot of coordination required? What do you think? No, not really.

Jogging is a fairly straightforward skill in running in a forward direction, putting one foot in front of the other, swinging the opposite arm as you go.

Not a huge amount of coordination, not when compared to other skills that we have to perform in other sports.

Does it require a lot of concentration? What do you think about that one? Again, no, not particularly.

People will go jogging with others like friends or family, and they will talk or have a discussion along the way about something completely unrelated to jogging because they don't need to concentrate that much on the skill of jogging.

Is there a lot of information to process? There's a pattern emerging here 'cause, no, not really.

You might need to think about the people you're sharing the pavement with, or perhaps if you're crossing the road, are there any vehicles nearby? But other than that, there's not a huge amount of information to process when we're jogging.

Is it quick and easy to learn? What do you think about that one? Actually, yes, in comparison to lots of skills that you learn, it is quite quick and easy.

You learn to jog probably in your first few years of your life, okay? Most other skills will take much longer to be able to perform.

So actually, yes, in comparison to most motor skills, it is one of the first skills you'll learn to be able to do.

Now if we look at that blend of characteristics, it's quick and easy to learn, but otherwise, there's not a huge amount of decision or coordination or concentration or information involved.

We would then classify jogging as a simple skill.

Let's just check for your understanding then.

Which two of these characteristics would you find with a simple skill? Is it, a, easy to learn, b, needs lots of coordination, c, not much concentration is needed, or d, you need to make lots of decisions? Remember there are two characteristics we are looking for here.

Well done if you said a and c.

Yes, they are easy to learn, and they don't require much concentration.

B and d were not correct answers because actually they are the opposite of what we would expect to find in a simple skill.

And with that in mind, let's do another example.

Let's think about dribbling in hockey.

Let's go through these five questions again.

Are there lots of decisions to make when we go dribbling in hockey? Yes, there are.

There's an awful lot of decisions to make when we dribble in hockey because it involves the opposition, it involves your teammates, it involves lots of different things, lots of different choices that you could make, whether you shoot, you pass or you continue to dribble, whether you have to dodge somebody or whether you've got lots of space around you.

All sorts of decisions you need to make when you dribble in hockey.

Is a lot of coordination required? You are coordinating your upper body and your arms to control the stick, which is controlling the ball, and your lower limbs are moving you in all sorts of different directions as you try and dodge the opposition or sprint into space, for example.

Does it require a lot of concentration? What do you think? Yes, it definitely requires lots of concentration.

You have all sorts of different stimulus coming into your brain that you have to process quite quickly while you're dribbling the ball and hoping to keep possession of it, and so, yes, you really need to concentrate.

You couldn't dribble the ball successfully if you were thinking about something else.

Is there a lot of information to process? Well, you probably gathered from the previous three questions that actually, yes, there's all sorts of information to process, the position of the teammates, the position of the opposition, the score, how long's left in the game.

All sorts of different pieces of information are going to have to be processed to help you decide what you're going to do and what actions you're going to take.

Final question is, is it quick and easy to learn? With jogging, we said yes.

You can learn that in your first few years, but dribbling in hockey takes much, much longer to learn because of all that coordination that's required, and so, no, it's not quick and easy to learn, and that blend of characteristics, and if you take a closer look, they are the exact opposite of jogging, aren't they? This blend of characteristics means that hockey dribbling is a complex skill.

That's how we would classify hockey dribbling.

So second check for understanding.

Hockey dribbling requires lots of information to be processed and that makes it a simple skill.

Is that true or false statement? That's a false statement, isn't it, or at least some of it is.

Why was that a false statement? Well, there are many factors to consider when dribbling.

So actually the bit saying that it requires lots of information to be processed is true.

Things like your teammates, the opposition, the space you have, the time you have, and much more information needs to be processed.

However, all that information needs to be processed means that it's classified as a complex skill and not a simple skill, and that's why the statement was false.

Well done if you noticed that.

Now here is our first look at the difficulty continua, and it's not particularly spectacular.

It is a straight line and at one end we have simple and at the other end we have complex, and there are our two examples that we've looked at so far, jogging and hockey dribbling added to that continua.

Now, skills are not always classified at one end or the other.

At the moment, jogging is right at the simple end of the continua, and hockey dribbling is right at the complex end of the continua, but that doesn't have to be the case every time with every skill.

So we can place a skill anywhere we want along the line.

Some skills won't be simple and complex.

They might be somewhere in the middle, and Aisha wants you to think about whether you can find a skill that would be classified in the middle of the continua, somewhere between simple and complex, and can you think of a skill? Now Aisha's got a question for you, and that's whether you can think of a skill that would be classified in the middle of the continua, somewhere between simple and complex.

It might have characteristics of both simple and complex skills.

You might not answer those five questions in quite the same way.

I recommend you pause the video here and think if you can find a skill that would fit somewhere there in the middle before I reveal one that I've got for you as an example.

Here's my example, and it's penalty kick in football, and I'm going to explain why.

So on the simple side, are there lots of decisions to make? Well, there are some, but not many.

The decision is made up for you, isn't it, that you have to kick the ball after the referee blows the whistle and that you're trying to score a goal.

There's no other options to make.

So you're trying to score with one kick.

That's all you're allowed.

Now, there are some decisions you might make, such as where in the goal to aim for, and you might base that on the knowledge of the goalkeeper, but in general, not too many decisions to make.

At the other end of the scale though, is it quick and easy to learn? Not particularly.

It's quite complex in that manner, isn't it? Kicking can be learned quite quickly and most toddlers can have an attempt at kicking a ball, but we're talking here about precision and being able to accurately kick the ball into the part of the goal that you want it to be, and that takes many more years to be able to learn.

What about is there lots of information to process? Well, not really, no.

There's not much information at all.

There's a goalkeeper to think about, but generally, the most information you need to think about is kicking that ball, but generally, there's not a huge amount of information that you need to worry about.

Does it require a lot of concentration? Yes it does.

In particular, in the case of the image that we can see, where there's a big crowd.

It's clearly a high-pressure situation and you really want to score, okay, which means really concentrating on kicking that ball accurately.

You couldn't take a penalty without concentrating on it, could you? So again, we have some aspects there which are simple and some aspects there which are complex.

So some characteristics of a simple skill and some characteristics of a complex skill means that I can justify its place there on the difficulty continua somewhere in the middle of simple and complex.

Check for your understanding again.

So which of these would be classified towards the middle of the difficulty continua, do you think? Is it a, a throw-in in football? Is it b, the pole vault? Or is it c, sprinting the 100 metres? Well done if you said a.

Of these three skills, a, the football throw-in, is much closer to the middle of the difficulty continua than the other two skills.

Why is that? Well, football throw-in doesn't require a huge amount of decisions to be made.

A bit like the penalty kick, you've got one skill to perform, and that's the only skill you can do.

You need to throw the ball in, and that action of throwing the ball over the head with two hands is something somebody can learn quite young.

Are there lots of decisions to make? Somewhere in the middle, okay? Certainly not as simple as sprinting where you just have one decision that's I'm gonna sprint in a straight line as fast as I can.

There are different people affecting where you would throw the ball and how far you will throw the ball and when you will throw the ball, but generally, it's kind of in the middle.

There's other skills with lots more decisions to make than football throw-ins but also some skills with a lot less.

And so generally what you'll find is that football throw-ins, if you do those five questions, would come up with some yes, some nos.

Whereas pole vault, very difficult, lots of concentration required, lots of information to process to make sure that you get it right and takes a very long time to learn to do it successfully.

So that is much more of a complex skill, and sprinting, a bit like jogging earlier but running a little bit faster, aren't we now? But generally not many decisions to make, not much information to process and learned at a very young age, being able to sprint as fast as you can.

So that would be much more at the simple end of the continua.

Well done if you said a.

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

I'd like you first of all to draw the difficulty continua, which shouldn't take much difficulty.

Consider the characteristics of the following skills and then place them on your difficulty continua, bit like I have so far in the lesson with those other skills.

We have a golf swing, a deadlift, downhill mountain biking, and kayaking, four skills I'd like you to place on your difficulty continua.

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

Okay, so pause the video here and work through the three parts of that task, and I'll see you in a few moments for some suggested answers.

Okay, so welcome back.

Hopefully you drew a continua that looks like that, a straight line with simple and complex at either end.

That was part one.

The second part was to place those four skills, wasn't it? Now, yours probably won't look exactly like mine, but hopefully we got them in the same order and roughly in the same place.

Here's how I place those four skills.

I put deadlift at the very end, a simple skill.

I put kayaking about a third of the way along, a golf swing about two thirds of the way along but just more complex than simple, and I put downhill mountain biking at the absolute complex end.

Now, you should have written a justification in part three of the task for each of those with a sentence about each as to why you placed them where you did.

Make sure that that refers to some of the following, and these should be very familiar to you now, the number of decisions, the amount of coordination, the amount of information, how quick and easy it was to learn, and the amount of concentration required.

If we compare the two skills at either end, the deadlift doesn't have many decisions at all to make.

You just decide when you're ready to go and pull that weight.

It does require some coordination, and it's important that you do coordinate it right with the correct form, but it's one single movement of where essentially you extend the body.

Is there a large amount of information to be processed with deadlifting? Not particularly.

Knowing the correct technique and the correct form is important, but otherwise, not a huge amount of information.

Is it quick and easy to learn? Yes, most people could learn how to do the deadlift technique quite quickly, and is there a lot of concentration? Well I'm sure people who are lifting that sort of weight, as we can see in the image in particular, are concentrating really hard on lifting the weight, but it's only for a couple of seconds at most before the deadlift has been performed, and so some concentration but not a huge amount, and so I think that justifies why I placed it there at the simple end.

If we compare it to something like downhill mountain biking, well, the number of decisions to make when downhill mountain biking, well, you are making decisions split second after split second because you're going quite fast down the side of a mountain, and the surface you're on and the obstacles that you need to overcome are changing every split second, okay? You have to coordinate with your feet pedalling, with your hands and your body, keeping the bike balanced and your arms and your hands obviously steering the front wheel and braking when necessary with your fingers.

The amount of information to be processed is huge.

Again, a tree branch is coming towards you.

You're going to go over a rock.

Your bike's skidding.

It's wet on the surface.

It's dry on the surface.

It's gravel, so it's you might skid.

All sorts of things to consider while you're downhill mounting biking.

Is it quick and easy to learn? No way.

Learning to ride a bike can be difficult and can take some people quite a long time just to be able to ride a bike, let alone being able to ride it down a downhill mountain bike track.

Does it require a lot of concentration? 100% concentration.

You cannot get away in downhill mountain biking without having your full focus on what you're doing and so absolutely is a complex skill.

The other two, I'm not gonna go into too much detail here, but the other two I placed because I felt they had some elements of complex skill and some elements of simple skill.

Kayaking I felt was just a little bit more simple in terms of the amount of coordination that's required when compared to a golf swing.

Well done if yours is something similar, but making sure that you've justified why you placed it where you did based on those five bullet points below.

And that brings us to the second part of today's lesson, which is called classifying skills on the environmental continua.

So we're looking at another continua and so should feel fairly familiar.

However, it's not the difficulty continua anymore.

It's the environmental continua, and that considers how stable and predictable the environment is when the skill is performed.

Let's have a look at what that means.

Environmental factors include other people, so do other people impact the performance of the skill? That could be teammates or opposition.

Is the situation always the same or is it always changing? Does the weather impact how the skill must be performed? Is the surface played on always the same? You think about how the skills in tennis might be performed differently slightly on clay surfaces as they are on grass surfaces.

Let's take an example again, and this time, our example is shooting in football.

Let's consider some of the environmental factors which influence how you kick a ball when you are shooting.

Well, if the surface is wet or dry might have an impact, okay? If you're playing on a seriously wet surface and there's a chance you might slip when you plant your foot to kick it, then you might perform the skill slightly differently than if the ground is bone dry.

Are you shooting with your strong foot or your weak foot? In this image, the girl is shooting with her right foot.

Is that her strong foot? In which case, she might shoot from where she is.

If it's her weaker foot, she might not risk it because she knows she can't generate the power and so she might get closer.

So again, the way she performs a skill might be different.

Now, very important environmental factor is other people, in particular the opposition.

What will that defender there do in the next few split seconds? Will they dive in front of the ball, try and slide tackle? Will they just continue to run? Will they fall over? Whatever happens to the opposition is going to have a serious impact on how the player shoots the ball.

What are the weather conditions? Is there a strong wind? If there's a strong wind blowing behind the girl who's about to shoot, she'll know that that will carry the ball a little bit extra.

Whereas if there's a strong headwind blowing into her face, then she might think that if she shoots from there, the ball wouldn't be able to get to the goal with enough power.

Again, we talk about other people here.

How good is the goalkeeper? Well, a really good goalkeeper might comfortably save a shot from there.

Whereas perhaps a not-so-good goalkeeper might concede a goal from that sort of range, and so that might have an impact on whether you shoot or how you shoot.

Again, other people, teammates.

Is it a good idea to shoot or would you be better off passing? You might change your mind at the last second.

And finally, is this a good position to be shooting from? Football shooting can be taken from literally anywhere on the pitch.

That position on the pitch might be a great position to shoot from.

It might not, and that will have a real impact on whether you do shoot and how you shoot.

What we can see there is that all sorts of factors are having an impact on whether the ball is shot and how.

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

It's what we call a perceptual skill, and it's externally paced.

Perceptual means you're having to make a decision about all sorts of different information which will impact how you perform the skill.

It's externally paced because you don't get to choose when you take the shot.

That is dependent on all sorts of factors, mainly other people.

Let's compare it to another skill, the basketball free throw.

Now, the basketball free throw is always taken from the same line and the same distance.

So already we have the opposite of football, don't we, where we said that shot in football can be taken from anywhere on the pitch.

The opposition are not allowed to block your shot in a free throw.

It's a free throw, meaning no opposition, and it's self-paced, not externally paced.

That means you can shoot when you're ready, okay? Nobody is influencing the shot.

You can have a little routine if you like before you take the shot and then perform it, and because it's self-paced and there's no time pressure, you can use the same technique every time.

So you can have a real practised rehearsed routine that you use every time you take a free throw.

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

If you go to any basketball court, it's probably the same dimensions, okay? The basket will be the same height.

The free throw line will be the same distance from the basket and so on, so very predictable environment.

Even though this photo shows people playing outdoors, a lot of basketball is played indoors.

So even the weather won't have an impact on the basketball free throw in many, many cases.

So here's an environmental continua, and no surprise, it looks very similar to the difficulty continua.

It's a straight line with, this time, open and closed at either end, two words we haven't actually looked at yet.

Now, when the environment the skill is performed in greatly affects the performance, we classify that skill as an open skill, and have a think which of the two skills we've looked at already fall into that category.

When the environment it is performed within is predictable, we classify the skill as a closed skill.

Again, think about which skill we've looked at already which would be categorised as a closed skill.

So where should our two examples be placed? Okay, I'm sure you got it the right way around.

The football shooting, with its vast array of environmental influences, is an open skill, and the basketball free throw, which is very much the same every time you take it, is a closed skill.

Is this true or false? Just check for your understanding.

Shooting in football is more perceptual than a basketball free throw.

What do you think? That is a true statement.

Why is that? Well, that's because there are 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.

There's a lot more information to perceive and to consider and to process than a basketball free throw has, which means it is more perceptual.

Second check for understanding.

Which of the following characteristics would you expect to see in a skill classified as a closed skill? Is it a, the same repeated action or technique every time? Is it b, self-paced? Is it c, that the weather impacts how you perform it? Is it d, performed differently every time? There may be more than one correct answer there.

Look closely.

Yes, hopefully you noted that a and b were both the characteristics you'd expect in a closed skill because it's the same repeated action or technique every time and they're self-paced.

Again, think back to that basketball free throw.

The weather impacting how you perform it would be something we associate with an open skill, as would d, that it's performed differently every time.

Well done if you said a and b, and here's your task for this section of the lesson.

Okay, we have an image here of people performing a relay changeover.

Hopefully you've had a go at this in an athletics lesson perhaps.

Now, how predictable or unpredictable is the relay changeover? Well, I've made some notes here on the image, and I said that while the action that you perform is the same every time, okay, handing over that baton can be repeatable, okay? Done the same way every time.

However, are there any unpredictable factors? Well, yes.

I've noted here that the weather might have an impact because relay changeovers are often performed outdoors, which brings a level of unpredictability.

What do I like you to do? I'd like you to add three more factors, as I have done, which affect the stability of a relay changeover, things you might think are predictable or things you might think are unpredictable.

I'd then like you to draw the environmental continua and place the skill of relay changeovers where you believe it should go on that continua.

Finally, the third part is to write a paragraph to justify your decision.

Tell us why you felt that the relay changeover belonged where it did on the continua.

Okay, pause the video here and answer those three parts of the question and then come and find me again for some answers.

Okay, so what might you have said in reply to my questions? Okay, so first of all, here is the image again with the two factors, one predictable, one unpredictable that I had already included.

Here's something you might have said, pressure from the other teams in the race, which is an unpredictable factor because in some cases, you might have a very, very close race.

In other races, they may be far ahead, and that pressure from the two different situations will be different, won't it? And when people are under pressure, it might change the way that they perform, might make them more anxious, more likely to drop the baton perhaps.

Now it's important to note that there are two people involved in this, and so one person might perform it perfectly, whereas the other person might not.

So this depends on the person who's receiving the baton in timing their run correctly, not running too early and therefore running outside of the box or the person not being able to catch them up.

Okay, so that's a bit of unpredictability, isn't it? How about this though? This is a skill that's performed on the same track, on the same dimensions, the same size of track everywhere in the world that you do it, okay? So it's very predictable that the shape and size of the track aren't going to change when you go to a new venue.

They'll be the same everywhere you go, and so you don't have to adapt, okay? Now, we said earlier that there are two people involved in this, and of course one of them might perform perfectly, the other might not.

In this case, we've got the arrow pointing at the person who's approaching with the baton, and if they don't pass the baton over at the right time or in the right way, no matter whether the person receiving has done their part of the role perfectly, it could be that the baton is not passed accurately, and so there is a bit of unpredictability about the fact that two different people have to perform at exactly the right time.

Final factor that I've said is that, well, we've talked about how this is done outside sometimes with the weather, and that might mean that the track is slippy if it has rained previously, and that might mean it's unpredictable because occasionally you do it on a wet track, but generally you might do it on a dry track, and that might slightly change the way you perform the skill.

How about that continua then? Here's where I placed it on the continua.

I placed it probably about three quarters of the way, much more closed than it is open.

I wonder if you agree with me on that, and I've tried to justify here with my paragraph why I placed it where I did.

So I said that it's more of a closed skill than open because it's an action that's repeated in a predictable way every time, and it really is, isn't it? The relay changeover should look exactly the same every time you perform it, but it does rely on more than one person coordinating their movements, which adds some unpredictability.

If we can pair it with that example we had earlier of the basketball free throw, only one person's involved in that, and so they can perform it exactly how they want to.

In this case, two people are involved.

So one might do it perfectly, one might not, and that will impact how successful they are.

So it's a bit of unpredictability.

Occasionally other environmental factors will have an impact, such as the weather, meaning it is not a completely closed skill, and that's why I placed it there about three quarters of the way along the continua, but certainly it is more of a closed than open skill.

I wonder if you agreed with me on that.

And that brings us to the end of today's lesson.

We've looked at two different continua.

Let's just read through the summary together.

So skills can be classified on continua according to their characteristics.

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

The environmental continua considers how much influence is placed on the skill by environmental factors, and skills are classified as either open or closed.

Now, I hope you enjoyed learning about those two different continua today, in addition to other continua which you may have learned about previously.

Now, being able to classify a skill on a continua is a really important first step which will ultimately end in you being able to decide how best to practise that skill or how best to coach that skill in order to be able to make the best progress and improvements for people, so very important first part of that process and a really important thing to keep practising.

So perhaps think about the skills that you want to learn or you want to improve at and think about how you might classify those on the different continua you are now familiar with.

Okay, good luck with that.

I'll see you in another lesson in the near future.