Motor Skills and Performance Characteristics

Motor skills are any tasks requiring voluntary body movement to achieve a specific goal. Think of everything from a simple forward roll to a complex basketball layup - they're all motor skills that require different levels of coordination and decision-making.

Skills exist on a spectrum from simple to complex. Simple skills like a forward roll need limited information processing and have few subroutines. Complex skills like a basketball layup require high-level decision making with loads of information to process and multiple subroutines working together.

The environment also affects how we perform skills. Open skills are affected by your surroundings and require you to respond to changing conditions - like saving a penalty where you react to the ball's direction. Closed skills happen in predictable environments with less decision making needed, such as a gymnastics routine that's self-paced.

When skills become fluent, they're 100% effortless to perform. Elite athletes also demonstrate aesthetic qualities (looking good whilst performing) and efficiency (performing without wasting energy), like a swimmer gliding smoothly through water.

Top Tip: Understanding whether a skill is open or closed helps you choose the right practice methods - closed skills need repetitive practice, whilst open skills need varied, unpredictable practice scenarios.