Motor Skill Development

Motor Abilities

Fundamental Motor Skills   

 Sports Specific Skills    

 It is very important for coaches to understand how skills are acquired or learnt in order that they cater for the needs of the athlete. Understanding the structure of the skill is explained below.

Abilities

 Ø       Each individual is born (INNATE or INHERITED) with their own unique set of motor abilities – Gross and Psychomotor Abilities.

Ø       Each skill is UNDERPINNED by its own set of abilities and to perform this skill the individual must possess the appropriate mix of abilities.

Ø       Everyone possesses each ability to a greater or lesser extent. The level of your abilities determine how well you master each skill, the speed you learn etc – however, this does not consider the psychological perspective where players who may not have outstanding levels of inherited abilities still can perform to a high level.

Ø       Some of the main abilities that are relevant to Volleyball Skills will be: Explosive Strength, Gross Body Co-ordination, Response Orientation (Libero), Reaction time  etc

Fundamental Motor Skills (FMS)

 Ø       There are sets of skills that can be seen to be the building blocks of all skills. They are basic by nature but are fundamental to learning more difficult or complex skills.

Ø       We refer to these as Fundamental Motor Skills (FMS). E.g. running, jumping, catching etc.

Ø       Each FMS has a series of subroutines which need to be mastered in order to progress onto learning sports specific skills

Ø       The FMS have definite coaching points that can be identifiedØ       If these skills are not mastered it makes it very difficult to learn complex or sports specific skills. It creates a SPORTS PROFICIENCY BARRIER 

Sports Specific Skills

 Ø       These FMS’s make up more complex skills such as the Spike Approach, Service, Volleyball, diving when retrieving a ball etc.

 Ø       We refer to these skills as Sport-Specific Skills.