Skill and Ability

Skills and Abilities

In this course, Dr Karl New (University of South Wales) explores skills and abilities. In the first lecture, we think about defining and differentiating skill and ability. Next, we think about skill classification and its relevance to sport. In the third and final lecture, we think about practice and skill acquisition, focusing on the four types of practice.

Skill and Ability

In this lecture, we think about skill and ability, focusing in particular on: (i) understanding a skill to be a complex, multifaceted interplay between technical ability, tactics and fitness level; (ii) understanding a skilled performance to be a high level of competence at one or more aspects of a sport; (iii) understanding motor abilities, in the context of sport, to be inherited, enduring and called upon in the development of motor skills; (iv) the fact that an athlete may have around 30-50 abilities, which can form the basis of limitless skills; (v) the key differentiator between ability and skill being that an ability is innate and a skill is learned; (vi) the role of the cerebellum in enabling the development of motor skills; (vii) the automatic nature of a highly skilled performance, enabled by the cerebellum; (viii) the fact that motor skills are not usually forgotten, riding a bike being the regularly used example; (ix) four criteria for a skilled performance being a clear end result, a movement learned and enhanced by practice, an efficient movement without wasted energy, and the action being a result of a biological chain of events; (x) the increased importance of efficiency as the overall skill level of the performance increases; (xi) the role of intent, coordination and fluency in a skilled performance; (xii) characteristics of a skilful movement efficiency, pre-determination, coordination, fluency, aesthetics and good technique; (xiii) the alternative arrangement of these characteristics according to the WJEC specification.