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Year 11
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Characteristics of skilful movement

I can explain with practical examples the characteristics of skilful movement.

icon-background-square
New
New
Year 11
OCR

Characteristics of skilful movement

I can explain with practical examples the characteristics of skilful movement.

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Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. Skill refers to the learned ability to bring about predetermined results with maximum certainty.
  2. A motor skill is a function that involves specific movements of the body's muscles to perform a certain task.
  3. Skilful movement is efficient, pre-determined, co-ordinated, fluent and aesthetically pleasing.

Keywords

  • Motor skill - a function that involves specific movements of the body's muscles to perform a certain task. These tasks could include walking, running, or riding a bike

  • Skilful movement - a fluent and co-ordinated movement which is efficient, technically accurate and aesthetically pleasing

  • Aesthetically pleasing - something that is visually attractive or appealing to the senses

Common misconception

Performance in sport is entirely down to physiological capabilities such as speed, strength and technique.

Psychological factors such as confidence, motivation and learned behaviours from similar experiences in the past have as much impact on performance sport as the level of skill players have.


To help you plan your year 11 physical education lesson on: Characteristics of skilful movement, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

This is a shorter lesson and. as such, a nice opportunity to unpick some recent examples from elite sport of how psychology has played an important part in the result, or to set a short research and feedback task for pupils to investigate and present to each other on different aspects of psychology.
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Teacher tip
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Equipment

Laptops if you decide to set a research task to discover different aspects of sports psychology and feed back. Perhaps steer pupils using the lesson titles/headings for the sports psychology units.

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Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

Lesson video

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6 Questions

Q1.
Sports psychology is the study of ...
the body and how it affects performance.
Correct answer: the brain and how it affects performance.
the gut and how it affects performance.
Q2.
Which of the following is not an area of psychology?
thinking and memory
arousal and focus
personality
stress management and positive mindset
Correct answer: the muscular system
Q3.
A warm up before competition helps our psychological state by ...
Correct answer: calming the nerves of some players.
Correct answer: increasing the arousal of some players.
Correct answer: getting some players 'in the zone'.
reducing blood flow to the working muscles.
reducing breathing rate.
Q4.
Which of the following are examples of skills from different sports?
Correct answer: tennis serve
Correct answer: chest pass in netball
Correct answer: a penalty pass in hockey
a resting heart rate below 60 BPM
Q5.
Place the following in the correct logical order from least to most experienced performer.
1 - Beginner
2 - Improver
3 - Advanced
4 - Expert
5 - GOAT (greatest of all time)
Q6.
Which of the following would you expect to see in the skilful execution of a sporting movement or technique?
Correct answer: consistency
Correct answer: accuracy
always successful
Correct answer: fluency
confusion

6 Questions

Q1.
What part of your body is responsible for decision making?
Correct answer: the brain
the heart
the lungs
the central nervous system
Q2.
Which of the following key terms are characteristics of a skilful movement?
Correct answer: fluent
unpredictable
Correct answer: aesthetically pleasing
effortless
Q3.
When a performance looks beautiful it is known as pleasing.
Correct Answer: aesthetically, aesthetic
Q4.
Match the following examples from golf to the 5 characteristics of skilful movement.
Correct Answer:fluent,smooth golf swing
tick

smooth golf swing

Correct Answer:pre-determined,the ball goes where intended
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the ball goes where intended

Correct Answer:aesthetic,the swing looks beautiful/stylish
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the swing looks beautiful/stylish

Correct Answer:co-ordinated,both arms, the torso and legs combine to produce the swing
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both arms, the torso and legs combine to produce the swing

Correct Answer:efficient,the ball goes a long way without wasted effort
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the ball goes a long way without wasted effort

Q5.
Match the following definitions.
Correct Answer:motor skill,a function that involves specific movements to perform a certain task
tick

a function that involves specific movements to perform a certain task

Correct Answer:skilful,fluent, co-ordinated, efficient, accurate and aesthetically pleasing
tick

fluent, co-ordinated, efficient, accurate and aesthetically pleasing

Correct Answer:aesthetically pleasing,something that is visually attractive or appealing to the senses
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something that is visually attractive or appealing to the senses

Correct Answer:co-ordinated,using multiple body parts effectively
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using multiple body parts effectively

Q6.
It is known as when you experience a catastrophic drop in performance in a big competition.
Correct Answer: choking