Principles of Skill

Learning
Topic 5.3
Learning vs performance
Learning is a relatively permanent change in performance brought about by
experience, excluding changes due to maturation and degeneration.

Performance is a temporary occurrence, fluctuating over time.

A change in performance over time is often used to infer learning.

Stages of learning
It is generally recognized that there are three stages of learning:

● cognitive – the learner has to think about what they’re doing, they verbalize to
aid memory, they attend to irrelevant stimuli, movement is crude and
uncoordinated
● associative – has developed the knowledge of what to do, but perfection
requires practice
● autonomous – can perform consistently with little thought
Rates of learning
An individual’s rate of learning may vary.

This rate may be shown on a graph, and may represent positive acceleration,
negative acceleration, a linear rate or a plateau.

In order to learn a skill, the learner needs to have the physical maturation, the
fitness, and the motivation to do so.

The rate of learning may be influenced by: physical maturation, physical fitness,
coaches, age, difficulty of task, teaching environment and motivation.
Transfer
Prior learning may transfer, or influence, later learning. The influence may be
positive or negative. Examples include:
➔ skill to skill (throwing a ball / throwing a javelin)
➔ practice to performance (batting vs machine / batting vs pitcher)
➔ abilities to skills (increasing strength to improve sprint starts)
➔ bilateral (learning to kick with “off” foot)
➔ stage to stage (3 v 3, moving to full game)
➔ principles to skills (use of lever / throwing javelin)
Types of skill practice
When planning a training session, one thing for coaches to consider is how to organize
the time dedicated to the practice of skills. It must be organized in a way to promote
learning.

● Distributed vs massed - are the rest periods shorter or longer? Consider age and
the nature of the task.
● Fixed practice is when the same movement skill is practiced over and over again.
● Blocked (aaa, bbb, ccc) vs. random (cab, bca, acb) vs. serial (abc, abc, abc) –
random is more effective than blocked for learning as it forces more cognition on
the learner’s behalf.
● Mental practice is valuable when accompanied by physical practice.
Types of presentation
The way a task is presented and taught is based on two aspects:

1. Complexity - how many subcomponents to the skill?

2. Organization - how interdependent are the subcomponents?

Highly organized, low complexity skills, such as a cartwheel, are best practiced
using whole practice.

More complex skills can be broken down, and methods such as progressive part or
whole-part-whole can be used.
Spectrum of teaching styles
A spectrum of teaching styles can be used. The amount of teacher vs student
control varies along the spectrum.

At one end of the spectrum is command style. This might be used in a spin class.

Somewhere in the middle is reciprocal style. It includes peer teaching.

Nearer the far end is the problem solving style. The coach sets the problem to be
overcome, and the athletes need to solve it.

Pros and cons?