Drills

[John Waters]

Have you read the McMorris book John?

Not all of it Vince but I will. It's reference that was recommended to me.

John

[VGB]

Hi John

Nils has provided an extract from 2004, a later edition was released in 2014 that was substantially rewritten. The skills summary below is offered for contrast:

I wonder what he would write in 2024?

Regards

Vince

[John Waters]

Who knows, but I'd be surprised if it did not contain a reference to consistency.

John

[VGB]

Consistency can mean many things. It can be consistently meeting the objective such as making the right decisions, as well as quantitative measures. McMorris covers this in the skill section already:

Regards

Vince

[VGB]

Sorry, I’ve had a spanking from teacher and am not allowed out to play.

[Paul Arden]

Hi Vince,

According to Schmidt and Lee, they use a definition of skill as meaning “the ability to bring about some end result with the maximum of certainty and minimum outlay of energy, or of time and energy” and summarise skills as “generally involve achieving some well-defined environmental goal by a) maximising the certainty of goal achievement b) minimising the physical and mental energy costs of performance and c) minimising the time used.”

No mention of meaning adaptability and they are usually pretty clear with their wording.

Cheers, Paul

(Chapter 1 of Motor Learning and Performance)

[VGB]

Hi Paul

Continue on to the bottom of P8 and start of 9, please also read the text in my last post.

Where little informa- tion processing is required, technique is the key factor. However, where decision making is important, it is the choice of which technique to use in any given situation that is the major issue. The British psychologist Poulton (1957) did not use the terms simple and complex, but rather open and closed, to distinguish between these kinds of skills. According to Poulton, open skills require much in the way of information processing and take place in environments that are rarely, if ever, completely repeated. The change in environment means that every time the skill is performed, the performer must modify his/ her technique to achieve the same goal, or even use a different technique to achieve the goal. Closed skills, on the other hand, take place in the same or very similar environments,

Do you only use casts available to read in a standard text, or do you sometimes contrive casts? Do you ever make changes to your cast stroke to stroke because it isn’t quite right?

Regards

Vince

[VGB]

Sorry, I’ve shown you the opinions of some of the top coaches in the world in multiple sports and they are big on adaptability as being a component of skill. If you don’t like it, then that is entirely up to you. Personally, I’ve had enough of online casting discussions and I’m out of it. I wish you all the best.

Regards

Vince

[NM]

Hi Nils

A person that is particularly skilled in doing something, say distance casting using the 170 techniques, or kicking a ball in a particular way, may of course also be able to adapt his/her use of those techniques to a changing environment. That implies, of course, that being able to adapt one’s use of the technique well to different circumstances could be used as an indicator of whether the person is skilled in executing that technique, but it is not the definition of being skilled.

This is quite an interesting example of the way that you look at skill. Imagine if I had 2 closely matched competitors that threw similar distances under competition constraints and took them to cast from a loch style boat. When casting from the boat, one was able to cast further you would say that they were still equally skilled.

Using the ball example. Imagine if 2 players took a free kick from a position and could score. If before the next attempt the goalkeepers position had moved, one player made an adjustment to his technique and scored but the other made no changes and the ball went straight to the keeper’s hands. You would say that they were equally skilled players.

Vince,
I am actually saying the opposite of that. Throwing similar distances in competition using the 170 technique means that they performed equally well and doesn’t imply that they are equally skilled at using that technique. Being able to perform better than the other in competition after competition under different weather conditions, as well as when casting from a boat, standing in the water with water up to your waist, or on the shore with obstacles behind you using variations of the 170 technique (it is my go-to distance fishing cast) would indicate that you master that technique better than the other person. That is, you are better skilled at using it.

Regarding your football example, they may be equally skilled at kicking the ball, but one of them appears to be better at taking free kicks. From the example, I cannot tell who is the better player because that requires they master additional skills besides being good at kicking the ball or taking free kicks.

[NM]

Vince,

The definition of skill in McMorris (2014) is identical word for word to the one in McMorris (2004). This is from the 2014 edition of his book:

I think it makes a lot of sense to start off with definition like that one that is sufficiently general to work for most sports irrespectively of whether they are on the closed or open end of the skill continuum, instead of as in your rugby example, one that only works for those at the very open end of skill continuum. I think it also makes a lot of sense to start off with a definition that is close to how the term is used in other contexts. With this starting point, the sports literature, including McMorris, that I have briefly looked at goes on and classify skills in different directions, including open and closed, discrete, continuous and serial skills, self-paced vs. externally phased etc. According to some of the articles I have looked at, discrete motor skills are actions that have a clear beginning and end and include a golf swing, a free-throw in basketball and throw-in or kicking a ball in football, and I guess a fly cast. And according to them, while kicking a ball has a definable beginning and end, playing football does not. Football consists of series of discrete skills that are linked together. How to use those discrete skills and how to link them together during a football match where the environment (including opponents) control the pace at which the skill is executed does require some additional skills than what is required for executing each of the discrete skills.

Best,

Nils