Lesson 17 · How are movement skills acquired, developed and improved?
Four questions to ask about any skill, and each answer changes the training
Classification has a reputation as the dullest thing in this subject, and it earns that reputation whenever it is taught as labelling. It is not labelling. Each of these four schemes is a question whose answer changes something specific about how the skill should be practised — whether to break it into parts, how predictable to make the practice environment, what to do about the drill that works perfectly in training and fails in a game. Get the classification right and the practice design follows almost automatically. Get it wrong and you will coach a netball shot as though it were a golf swing, which is a real and common mistake with a real cost.
A player can sink 45 out of 50 unopposed shots from the same spot in training. In a match, from the same spot, she makes about half.
The usual explanations are nerves and fatigue. Both are possible. But there is a third explanation that has nothing to do with either, and it is about what the training drill and the match are asking her to do differently — not how hard, but what kind of task each one is. Write down what you think that difference is.
Then a second question: list three skills you would teach by breaking them into parts, and three you would not. What do the second three have in common that the first three do not?
- Classify a skill as gross or fine, and say what that implies for the precision demanded and for the effect of fatigue.
- Classify a skill as continuous, discrete or serial, and use that to decide whether part practice is available.
- Classify a skill as open or closed, and explain why this is the classification that most changes how practice should be designed.
- Classify a skill as self-paced or externally paced, and explain how it relates to, but is not the same as, open and closed.
- Explain why each scheme is a continuum rather than a pair of boxes, and place a skill on it with a reason.
- Classify one skill on all four schemes at once, and derive its practice design from the four answers together.
- Diagnose the training-to-match transfer failure in Card 01 as a classification error rather than a psychological one.
- Gross motor skill — a skill using large muscle groups, where the demand is for force and whole-body coordination.
- Fine motor skill — a skill using small muscle groups, where the demand is for precision and control.
- Continuous skill — a skill with no obvious beginning or end, whose end becomes the beginning of the next cycle.
- Discrete skill — a skill with a clear beginning and end, performed as one unit.
- Serial skill — a sequence of discrete skills performed in order, where the order itself matters.
- Closed skill — a skill performed in a predictable, stable environment that the performer largely controls.
- Open skill — a skill performed in an unpredictable, changing environment that the performer must read.
- Self-paced skill — a skill the performer starts when they choose.
- Externally paced skill — a skill whose timing is imposed by something outside the performer.
- Perceptual demand — the requirement to read the environment and select a response, as distinct from executing the movement.
This scheme classifies by the size of the muscle groups involved and the precision required. A gross skill uses large muscle groups for force and whole-body coordination — running, throwing, a rugby tackle, a swimming stroke. A fine skill uses small muscle groups for precision — a dart throw, a golf putt, the grip adjustments in archery, the release in a basketball free throw.
Almost every sporting skill is a mixture, and saying so is the correct answer rather than a hedge. A basketball shot uses the legs and trunk to generate force, which is gross, and the fingertips to control the release, which is fine. The useful question is not which box it goes in but which component is more likely to be the limiting one, because that decides what practice should protect.
Quick check: The most useful thing to say about whether a basketball shot is a gross or a fine motor skill is that:
This scheme classifies by whether the skill has identifiable start and end points, and it is the one that decides whether you can break a skill up to teach it.
| Category | Description | Examples | What it implies for practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Continuous | No obvious beginning or end; the end of one cycle is the start of the next | Running, cycling, swimming, rowing | Part practice is largely unavailable, because cutting the cycle destroys the rhythm that is the skill. Practise whole, and modify the conditions instead |
| Discrete | A clear beginning and end, performed as a single unit | A penalty kick, a golf putt, a basketball free throw, a javelin throw | Suits high-repetition practice of the whole skill; the unit is already short enough not to need breaking |
| Serial | A sequence of discrete elements in a fixed order, where the order is itself part of the skill | A gymnastics routine, a triple jump, a tennis serve, a lay-up | The category where part practice is genuinely useful, because the elements can be isolated — but the joins between them must then be practised too, since the transitions are where serial skills fail |
That last cell is the answer to the second half of Card 01. The skills you would break into parts are serial ones; the skills you would not are continuous ones, because the rhythm is the skill and a cut destroys it. And the warning attached to it is the part coaches forget: practising the elements of a serial skill without practising the joins produces an athlete who can do every part and cannot do the skill. A triple jumper who has drilled the hop, the step and the jump separately still has to learn to arrive at the second phase with the speed the third one needs.
True or false: Continuous skills such as swimming are the category that benefits most from being broken into parts for practice.
This scheme classifies by how predictable the environment is, and it is the most consequential of the four because it decides what the athlete is actually learning to do.
A closed skill is performed in a stable, predictable environment the performer largely controls: a golf putt, a gymnastics vault, a free throw taken alone, a shot put. The target does not move, nobody interferes, and the aim is to reproduce one consistent, near-perfect movement. Practice for a closed skill should therefore be highly repetitive under constant conditions, because consistency is the goal.
An open skill is performed in an unpredictable, changing environment: passing in a football match, returning a serve, tackling a moving player, a rugby line break. The environment changes every time, so the movement must change with it. The skill is not the movement alone — it is reading the situation and selecting the right movement, which is a perceptual demand as much as a motor one. Practice must therefore be varied and unpredictable, with real opposition, because practice under constant conditions never trains the reading.
Two qualifications that stop this being applied too bluntly. First, closed practice of an open skill is not useless — it is how a beginner builds the movement in the first place, and Lesson 16 explains why: a cognitive learner has no attention to spare for reading anything. The error is staying there. Second, most skills sit on a continuum: a lineout throw is more closed than a pass in open play and more open than a putt, and saying where on the line a skill sits and why is a better answer than forcing it into a box.
Match each skill to its classification on the scheme named.
- Swimming freestyle over 400 metres
- A tennis serve
- Returning that serve
- A golf putt
- Continuous — no clear beginning or end
- Serial — a fixed sequence of discrete elements
- Open and externally paced — the environment and the timing are imposed
- Closed and self-paced — stable environment, performer chooses when to start
This scheme classifies by who controls the timing. A self-paced skill is begun when the performer chooses — a serve, a free throw, a golf swing, a javelin throw. An externally paced skill is begun in response to something outside the performer — returning a serve, intercepting a pass, a sprint start on the gun, tackling a runner.
It correlates with open and closed, and it is not the same thing, and questions are set on exactly that difference. Self-paced skills are usually closed and externally paced skills are usually open, because an unpredictable environment normally also dictates the timing. But the two can come apart, and the cases where they do are the ones worth knowing:
A sprint start is externally paced and largely closed. The gun dictates the timing, so it is not self-paced. But the environment is entirely stable and predictable — same blocks, same lane, no opponent interfering with the movement — so it is closed. The practice implication follows: rehearse the movement repetitively under constant conditions, and practise reacting to an unpredictable starting signal, because those are two different demands.
A penalty in football is self-paced and mostly closed — the taker chooses the moment and the environment is stable — but it carries an unusual perceptual element if the taker waits to read the goalkeeper's movement, which is what makes penalty technique argued about.
A lineout throw in rugby is self-paced but only partly closed. The thrower chooses when to release, which is self-paced, but the opposition may contest the jump, which introduces environmental unpredictability. Two schemes, two different answers, one skill.
The practical difference is where the pressure falls. A self-paced skill lets the performer prepare, so it is the one where a pre-performance routine helps, and it is also the one where anxiety has time to build — which is why the highest-pressure moments in sport are so often self-paced. An externally paced skill gives no such time, so what matters is reaction time and anticipation, which is trained by practising against realistic and unpredictable cues rather than by repetition.
Two truths and a lie. Which statement is false?
The four schemes are independent, so any skill has four answers, and it is the combination that tells you how to practise it. Here are three skills classified completely, with the practice design derived rather than asserted.
| Skill | Gross / fine | Continuous / discrete / serial | Open / closed | Pacing | Practice that follows |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Golf putt | Mainly fine | Discrete | Closed | Self-paced | High-repetition whole practice under constant conditions, with a pre-shot routine, since the aim is one reproducible movement |
| Basketball lay-up in a game | Both; fine at release | Serial | Open | Externally paced | Part practice of the elements, then the joins, then varied and opposed practice under real defensive pressure — and some of it done tired |
| Freestyle swimming | Gross | Continuous | Closed | Externally paced at the start only | Whole practice, varied by pace and distance rather than by breaking the stroke; the start practised separately as its own reaction task |
Read the lay-up row against the putt row, because the contrast is the whole lesson. Both are basketball-adjacent skills involving a ball and a target. Their classifications differ on three of the four schemes, and consequently almost nothing about how you would practise them is the same. Anyone who coaches the second the way you should coach the first will produce a player who can execute a lay-up beautifully in an empty gym.
Fill the gaps. Type one word in each box.
A skill performed in an unpredictable, changing environment is called an skill. A skill made up of a fixed sequence of discrete elements, such as a triple jump, is called a skill. A skill the performer begins when they choose, such as a golf putt, is .
Text description
- Two parts, one above the other.
- Above, four horizontal continua stacked: gross to fine, continuous through serial to discrete, closed to open, and self-paced to externally paced, with a golf putt marked near the closed, discrete and self-paced ends and a lay-up in a game marked near the open, serial and externally paced ends, showing that the two skills differ on three of the four schemes.
- Below, the Card 01 diagnosis: an unopposed shot from one spot is a closed practice while the same shot in a match is an open skill, so the player has practised only the execution half of the task and the perceptual half of reading the defender and the pass has had no practice at all.
Activities · put the method to work
Choose five skills from one sport, including at least one you would call closed and one you would call open.
Classify all five on all four schemes. Where a skill sits between two categories, say where on the continuum and why, rather than choosing the nearer box. "Mostly closed, because the environment is stable except for the wind" is a better answer than "closed".
Find the disagreement. Compare with a partner. At least one of your five will be classified differently by the two of you. Argue it out, and record what the disagreement turned on — usually it is that you were imagining the skill in different contexts, which is itself the finding.
Derive the practice. For each skill, write one sentence saying what its classification implies for how it should be practised. A classification with no implication has not been used.
Redesign a drill you have actually done that treated an open skill as a closed one. Specify what you would add to make the environment genuinely unpredictable — a live defender, a randomised feed, a decision between two options — and say what the athlete would now be learning that they were not before.
Step 4 is the one that carries the point. "Make it harder" is not the answer; adding fatigue or speed to a closed drill leaves it closed. The requirement is unpredictability, and specifically a decision the athlete must make from information that is not available in advance.
Odd one out. Three of these are closed skills. Which one is open?
For each drill: classify the skill it is meant to develop on all four schemes, decide whether the drill matches that classification, and say what you would change. At least one of these drills is entirely appropriate, so do not assume every scenario is broken.
A netball coach runs 20 minutes of unopposed shooting from five marked spots, every session, all season.
A swimming coach spends a session on isolated arm drills with a pull buoy, then on kick drills with a board, and never swims the full stroke.
A golf coach has a player hit 60 identical putts from the same distance on the same line.
A triple jump coach drills the hop, the step and the jump as three separate exercises for six weeks.
Scenario 4 is not simply right or wrong, and saying which it is depends on something the scenario does not tell you. Name what you would need to know, and give your verdict for each possible answer.
Explain how motor skills are classified, and how the classification of a skill influences the way it should be practised.
Explain requires how and why, and the second half of the question — "influences the way it should be practised" — is where the marks concentrate. A complete and accurate set of four classifications with no practice implications attached is a three-mark answer at best.
Plan: name the four schemes with their criterion; then take each one and attach the practice consequence in the same paragraph; then the continuum point; then one worked combination to show the schemes acting together.
Skills are classified as gross or fine according to the size of the muscle groups involved and the precision required; because fatigue degrades fine control more sharply than force production, a skill whose fine component is limiting must be practised in a fatigued state as well as a fresh one. Skills are classified as continuous, discrete or serial according to whether they have identifiable start and end points; this decides whether part practice is available, since a serial skill can be broken into its elements while a continuous skill cannot, because cutting the cycle destroys the rhythm that constitutes the skill.
Skills are classified as closed or open according to the predictability of the environment. A closed skill is performed in a stable environment the performer controls, so the aim is one consistent reproducible movement and practice should be highly repetitive under constant conditions. An open skill is performed in an unpredictable environment, so the skill is not the movement alone but reading the situation and selecting a response; practice must therefore be varied, unpredictable and opposed, because repeating an open skill under constant conditions trains only the execution and leaves the perceptual half of the task unpractised.
Motor skills are classified on four independent schemes, and each classification answers a question that changes how the skill should be practised. The first classifies skills as gross or fine according to the size of the muscle groups involved and the precision demanded: gross skills such as running or a tackle use large muscle groups for force and whole-body coordination, while fine skills such as a golf putt or the release of a basketball shot use small muscle groups for precision. Most sporting skills combine both, and the useful question is which component is limiting, because fatigue degrades fine control considerably more sharply than it degrades force production, so a skill whose fine component limits it must be practised fatigued as well as fresh rather than only when the athlete is fresh. The second classifies skills as continuous, discrete or serial according to whether they have identifiable beginning and end points. A continuous skill such as swimming or running has no clear start or finish, the end of one cycle becoming the beginning of the next; a discrete skill such as a penalty kick is a single unit with a clear start and end; a serial skill such as a triple jump or a lay-up is a fixed sequence of discrete elements in which the order is itself part of the skill. This classification decides whether part practice is available: serial skills can be broken into their elements, though the transitions between them must then be practised specifically, since that is where serial skills fail; continuous skills cannot usefully be broken, because cutting the cycle destroys the rhythm that constitutes the skill, so they are practised whole and varied by pace or distance instead. The third classifies skills as open or closed according to the predictability of the environment, and it is the classification that changes practice design most. A closed skill is performed in a stable, predictable environment the performer largely controls, so the aim is a single consistent and reproducible movement and practice should be repetitive under constant conditions. An open skill is performed in an unpredictable, changing environment, so the movement must be adapted each time and the skill consists of reading the situation and selecting a response as much as of executing a movement; practice must therefore be varied, unpredictable and opposed. Practising an open skill under closed conditions produces an athlete who executes well in training and fails in competition, because only the execution half of the task has been trained and the perceptual half has had no practice at all. The fourth classifies skills as self-paced or externally paced according to who controls the timing. Self-paced skills allow preparation, so a pre-performance routine is valuable and anxiety has time to build; externally paced skills give no preparation time, so anticipation and reaction to realistic unpredictable cues are what practice must develop. Each scheme is a continuum rather than a pair of boxes, and the four are independent, so a skill has four answers and it is their combination that determines the practice design: a golf putt is fine, discrete, closed and self-paced, and so is practised by high repetition under constant conditions with a routine, whereas a lay-up in a game is mixed, serial, open and externally paced, and so requires part practice of its elements, then of the joins, then varied and opposed practice under genuine defensive pressure. Classifying a skill is only worth doing if the classification is then used to decide something.
A player shoots 45 from 50 unopposed in training and approximately half in matches. Analyse this using the characteristics of motor skills, and propose a practice design that would address it.
Nerves and fatigue are real and should be acknowledged rather than ignored — but the question says "using the characteristics of motor skills", which directs the answer to classification. Acknowledging the alternatives and then setting them aside with a reason is stronger than pretending they do not exist.
Plan: acknowledge and set aside; classify the drill and classify the match skill; name the mismatch; explain what has therefore gone unpractised; then the redesign, with the reason each change is there; then the qualification about beginners.
The training task is closed and self-paced: the same spot, no opponent, a ball arriving the same way each time, and the player beginning when she is ready. The match task is open and externally paced: a defender closing at an unpredictable moment, a pass arriving early or behind her, her feet not where she would have chosen, and the timing dictated by the play. On two of the four schemes the drill and the match are opposites.
The practice must reintroduce the perceptual demand. Add a live defender rather than a cone, so the shot must be adapted to a real closing action; randomise where and when the ball arrives, so her feet and balance must be organised under time pressure; require a decision between shooting and passing, so that selecting the response is part of the task; and impose the pace externally with a shot clock or a moving sequence. Some repetitions should be performed fatigued, because the fine component of the shot is the first thing fatigue degrades.
Anxiety and fatigue are plausible contributors and should not be dismissed, but neither accounts for a gap of this size in a player who demonstrably possesses the movement, and the characteristics of motor skills supply a more complete explanation. The training task and the match task are different classes of skill. The training task is closed and self-paced: the environment is stable and predictable, the player shoots from the same marked spot, no opponent interferes, the ball arrives in the same way each time, and she begins the movement when she is ready. The match task is open and externally paced: a defender is closing at a moment she does not choose, the pass may arrive early, late or behind her, her feet and balance are not organised as she would have organised them, and the timing is imposed by the play rather than selected. On two of the four classification schemes the drill and the match are opposites. The consequence is that an open skill has been practised under closed conditions. An open skill consists of two components — reading the environment and selecting the appropriate response, then executing the movement — and her practice has trained only the second. Her 45 from 50 is genuine evidence that her execution is excellent; it is simply evidence about the half of the task that the match does not principally test. The perceptual component, which is most of what a match demands, has had no practice at all, so it is unsurprising that it performs poorly under the only conditions in which it is ever used. There is a secondary contribution from the gross-fine scheme: the shot combines a gross force-generating component with a fine release, and fatigue degrades fine control considerably more sharply than force, so shooting practised only when fresh is additionally unrepresentative of the fourth quarter. The practice design that follows addresses each mismatch specifically. A live defender should replace the cone, so that the shot must be adapted to a real and variable closing action rather than executed identically. The delivery should be randomised in position and timing, so that organising the feet and balance under time pressure becomes part of the skill rather than a condition removed from it. The player should be required to choose between shooting and passing on the basis of what the defence actually does, so that response selection is trained rather than assumed. The pace should be imposed externally, by a shot clock or by the player's arrival in a moving sequence, to match the externally paced nature of the match skill. And a proportion of the repetitions should be performed in a fatigued state, to represent the conditions in which the fine component is most vulnerable. One qualification prevents this being applied too bluntly. Closed practice of an open skill is not worthless; it is how the movement is built in the first place, and a learner in the cognitive stage has no spare attention with which to read a defender, so early practice must be simplified. The error is not in having used closed practice but in never having progressed beyond it, and the redesign above is therefore a change in emphasis appropriate to a player who has clearly mastered the execution, not a rule that all practice must be opposed.
Multiple choice · 5 questions
MC 1. A skill performed in a stable, predictable environment that the performer largely controls is classified as:
- A. an open skill
- B. a closed skill
- C. a serial skill
- D. a gross skill
MC 2. A triple jump is best classified as:
- A. continuous, because the athlete does not stop between phases
- B. discrete, because it is a single attempt with a clear result
- C. serial, because it is a fixed sequence of discrete elements in which the order matters
- D. externally paced, because the run-up determines the timing
MC 3. Which classification decides whether part practice is a genuine option for a skill?
- A. gross or fine
- B. open or closed
- C. self-paced or externally paced
- D. continuous, discrete or serial
MC 4. A sprint start is:
- A. externally paced and largely closed
- B. self-paced and open
- C. self-paced and closed
- D. externally paced and open
MC 5. Practising an open skill under constant, unopposed conditions produces a player who:
- A. performs well in matches but poorly in training
- B. cannot execute the movement accurately at all
- C. executes well in training but has not practised reading the situation
- D. acquires the skill faster than one practising under varied conditions
Short answer · exam style
SA 1. Remember Band 3 Distinguish between open and closed motor skills, giving one example of each. (3 marks)
SA 2. Apply Band 5 Classify a tennis serve and a tennis return of serve on all four schemes, and explain how the differences should change the way each is practised. (5 marks)
SA 3. Analyse Band 6 Analyse why a player may perform a skill excellently in training and poorly in competition, using the characteristics of motor skills, and propose how the practice should change. (6 marks)
📖 Comprehensive answers (click to reveal)
Multiple choice: 1 → B. 2 → C. 3 → D. 4 → A. 5 → C.
Activity 1 guidance: Step 1's instruction to place skills on the continuum rather than in the nearer box is the one that produces better answers, and it should be enforced: "mostly closed, because the environment is stable except for the wind" demonstrates the concept where "closed" only demonstrates recall. Step 2 reliably produces a disagreement, and the resolution is almost always the same — the two students were imagining the skill in different contexts. A basketball free throw is closed; the same shooting action in open play is not, and neither student was wrong about the skill they were picturing. Recording that is more valuable than settling on one label, because it establishes that classification is relative to context, which is a genuinely examinable point. Step 4 is where most of the learning is, and the trap is well worth naming to the class in advance: students overwhelmingly propose making the drill harder or faster, and a faster closed drill is still closed. The test to apply to any proposed change is whether the athlete now has to make a decision from information that was not available before the repetition began; adding a live defender, a randomised feed, or a choice between two responses all pass that test, while adding fatigue, speed or a count-down does not.
Activity 2 guidance: Drill 1 treats an open skill as closed, and running it all season is the specific error: some closed practice is appropriate early, but by mid-season it trains only the half of the task the match does not test. Drill 2 breaks a continuous skill into parts, which is the misapplication of part practice; the drills are not useless, since they can isolate a technical fault, but a session containing no full-stroke swimming leaves the rhythm — which is what the skill actually consists of — unpractised. Drill 3 is appropriate and is the one that is not broken: a putt is closed, discrete and self-paced, so high-repetition practice under constant conditions is exactly right, and the only refinement worth suggesting is varying the distance and line late in a session to match the fact that no two putts on a course are identical. Drill 4 depends on information the scenario withholds: part practice of a serial skill is legitimate, so the question is whether the joins are ever practised. If the six weeks include practice of the hop-to-step and step-to-jump transitions and the whole jump, the design is sound; if the three elements are only ever drilled separately, the athlete will be able to perform every phase and unable to perform the event, because arriving at each phase with the right speed and body position is the part that was never trained.
SA 1 (3 marks): Closed skill defined — performed in a stable, predictable environment that the performer largely controls, with the aim of one consistent reproducible movement — with an example such as a golf putt, a gymnastics vault or a shot put [1]. Open skill defined — performed in an unpredictable, changing environment, so the movement must be adapted and the skill includes reading the situation and selecting a response — with an example such as a pass in open play or a return of serve [1]. The criterion that separates them stated explicitly as the predictability of the environment, rather than the two merely being described [1]. An answer that distinguishes them by difficulty rather than by environmental predictability has misunderstood the scheme and earns at most 1.
SA 2 (5 marks): Serve classified on all four — gross with a fine component, serial, closed, self-paced [1]. Return classified on all four — gross with a fine component, discrete or serial depending on the stroke, open, externally paced [1]. The differences identified: they agree on gross-fine and differ on open-closed and on pacing, which is the important pair [1]. Practice for the serve — high repetition under constant conditions, part practice of the toss, the swing and the joins between them, with a pre-serve routine since it is self-paced and preparation time is available [1]. Practice for the return — varied and unpredictable, against real and different servers rather than a machine delivering identically, training anticipation and response selection rather than one reproducible movement, since the perceptual demand is the substance of the skill [1]. An answer that classifies both correctly but gives one practice implication covering both has not used the classification.
SA 3 (6 marks): Acknowledges anxiety and fatigue as plausible but insufficient, with a reason [1]. Classifies the training task — closed and self-paced, stable environment, performer chooses when to begin [1]. Classifies the competition task — open and externally paced, unpredictable environment, timing imposed [1]. Names the mismatch and its consequence: an open skill practised under closed conditions trains only the execution component, leaving the perceptual component of reading the situation and selecting a response unpractised [1]. Proposes at least three specific changes, each tied to the classification it repairs — live opposition for the environmental unpredictability, randomised delivery for the loss of self-pacing, a genuine decision between responses for the perceptual demand, external pacing, and some fatigued repetitions for the fine component [1]. Qualifies the argument: closed practice is how the movement is built and is appropriate for a learner in the cognitive stage, so the error is failing to progress beyond it rather than using it at all [1]. Proposals amounting to "make the drill harder or faster" do not earn the fifth mark, because a faster closed drill remains closed.
Four schemes, four questions, four consequences. Gross or fine asks about muscle size and precision — and because fatigue degrades fine control first, a skill limited by its fine component must sometimes be practised tired. Continuous, discrete or serial asks where the movement begins and ends — and it decides whether part practice is even available: serial skills can be broken up, continuous ones cannot, because the rhythm is the skill.
Open or closed is the one that changes the most. A closed skill lives in a stable environment, so the aim is one reproducible movement and repetitive constant practice is right. An open skill lives in an unpredictable one, so the skill is reading the situation and selecting a response as much as executing a movement — and varied, opposed, unpredictable practice is the only thing that trains the reading. Self-paced or externally paced asks who controls the timing; it correlates with open and closed without being identical to it, and a sprint start is the standing counter-example: externally paced, and almost entirely closed.
Card 01, answered: it was not nerves. Forty-five from fifty unopposed from one spot is closed practice of an open skill. She is excellent at the execution half, and the perceptual half — which is most of what a match is — has never been practised at all. The repair is not more shots and not a conversation about confidence; it is a defender, a randomised feed, a real decision to make, and some of it done tired. And note what does not fix it: making the drill harder or faster leaves it closed.
The rule that makes this dot point worth marks. Every scheme is a continuum, not two boxes, and classification is relative to context — the same shooting action is closed at the free-throw line and open in play. Most importantly: a classification is only worth making if you then say what it changes. Four correct labels with no practice implications attached is half an answer.
Lesson 18 completes this inquiry question's first dot point with the three sub-points that this lesson has been implying throughout: practice methods — massed, distributed, whole, part, blocked and random — the performance elements of decision-making and strategic and tactical development, and the six types of feedback.
Mark lesson as complete
Tick when you've finished the practice and review.