The characteristics of the learner are as varied as any personal characteristics. These characteristics of a person affect their capacity to and speed at which they learn a new skill.

The characteristics can include personality traits, such as a willingness to learn and accept criticism. They also include hereditary factors, such as height or body type. Confidence levels will also affect the rate at which a new skill is learnt. An athlete should not be overconfident, but neither should they lack confidence as both are detrimental to skill learning.

Other characteristics of the learner such as their prior experiences and natural ability will also affect skill learning. An athlete with positive experiences in learning skills, especially similar skills will learn new skills faster. As will an athlete who has great natural ability such as the person who naturally has good hand eye coordination. 

Personality is the characteristic way that someone behaves, thinks and feels. These characteristic aspects of the person influence their efforts and mentality towards skill development, which greatly influences skill acquisition.

How people behave greatly impacts the acquisition of skill. Someone who is characterised by positivity will develop a skill faster than someone who is not. Acquiring a skill requires hard work and dedication. 

If someone has a personality that frequently has negative thoughts about skill development and personal ability this diminishes their ability to acquire skills. Positive self-talk and self-confidence will positively influence skill acquisition.

How an athlete feels will also impact skill acquisition. If an athlete feels energetic and focused then they are more likely to succeed in acquiring a new skill. In contrast, an athlete who is often negative or is characterised by feeling sluggish will develop the skill much slower and to a lower level.

Traits within a personality that help in the acquisition of skill include determination, enthusiasm, dedication, positive attitude, cooperation, patience and a willingness to try something new. These help an athlete to accept and respond to a coach's feedback, try new ways of completing the skill or try new skills.

These personality traits help the athlete to not get frustrated over errors or a lack of progress and are more likely to keep the athlete trying when things go wrong compared to other athletes. These types of athletes also help promote a more positive learning environment for others and the coach, which improves their capacity to develop the skill.

An athlete’s heredity characteristics are those genetically inherited; including gender, race, muscle type and somatotype (body type).

Gender affects levels of hormones, particularly testosterone responsible for muscle growth and development. As such, males tend to be more muscular, stronger and more powerful than females. This difference has caused the labelling of some sports as ‘male’ or ‘female’, though these labels are not justified. Gender tends to have little effect on competition as sports are normally gender specific, but it does affect performance with males performing better in sports requiring speed, power and strength such as swimming and rugby league.

Racial characteristics are inherited and can include specific genes that make individuals more suited to particular sports. It has often been thought that African athletes have higher percentages of fast twitch muscle fibres which has led to the domination of people of African decent in the 100m finals and in basketball. As well as the domination of African long distance runners in the last 40 years. While Caucasian ethnic groups have been more prevalent in sports such as swimming, ice skating and hockey. There is significant research that there are a number of factors that lead to athletic performance, not just genetics. 

Muscle type is hereditary and cannot be changed. The relative balance or percentage of each type of muscle fibre will suit athletes to particular sports. Athletes with high levels of type II, fast twitch fibres are more suited to fast, powerful sports such as 100m sprint, rugby league or shot-put. Athletes with high levels of type I, slow twitch fibres on the other hand are more suited to longer more enduring sports such as marathon running or cross-country skiing. There are other sports that require a balance of both and suit athletes who have a good number of both types of fibres, these include soccer, netball and Australian Rules Football.

Similarly, somatotype can help determine an athlete’s suitability for particular sports. Endomorphs, carry more weight and tend to hold the weight lower have advantages in sports such as rugby union or blocking in American Football. Mesomorphs tend to be very muscular and have low body fat and are best suited to sports such as Australian Rules Football, bodybuilding and rowing. Ectomorphs are lean and are best suited for sports such as long distance running, high-jump and horse racing. Differences in height will also affect which sports the athlete is best suited to. Tall athletes tend to suit sports such as netball, basketball or volleyball; while shorter athletes are more suited for horse racing, gymnastics and martial arts.

People can acquire skills quickly and perform them well, while not being suited for the sport such as a short high-jumper who performs the skill well, but does not jump as high as a taller person more suited to the sport.

Confidence is a belief in one’s own ability and positively influences skill acquisition. Confidence grows with success, so successful skill execution will in turn increase confidence making the athlete learn new skills faster. It is important for coaches to provide opportunities for success early on in order to grow the athletes belief in their ability to do the skill well.

Previous experience will also affect an athlete’s belief in themselves. If the athlete has completed similar skills well before, they will have a greater belief that they will master the new skill as well. This means that the coach should progress skill learning moving from easy to harder skills. Faster success in the easier skill will increase confidence and result in faster acquisition of the new harder skill.

Conversely, if skills are not learnt and frequent failure occurs, belief levels will decrease and the rate and level of skill acquisition will decrease with it. Over confidence results in poor skill acquisition, as the athlete believes that they are better than they are and begin to try new harder skills before they are ready to do so. It can also lead to the skill never being perfected and so the athlete never moves into the mastery autonomous stage of skill acquisition.

Prior experience is the transfer of skills from one context to another allowing the athlete to learn new similar skills faster than people who have no prior experience. Skill transfer can be lateral or vertical.

Lateral transfer is easy and is the transfer of a similar skill from one context to another such as tackling in rugby union after learning to tackle in rugby league or learning to surf after learning to skateboard. 

Vertical transfer is the transfer of a skill from a lower order skill to a similar higher order skill, such as shooting in basketball to doing a lay up or learning to throw before learning to shoot in netball. If the prior experience was positive and had successful performances, then the new skill will be acquired more easily.

Female athletes Jana Pittman and Nova Peris transferred their athletic ability from one sport to the next. Successful hurdle athlete Jana Pittman competed in the Summer Olympics in hurdles and track in the mid 2000s and competed in the 2014 Winter Olympics in two-person bobsleigh. Nova Peris was the first Aboriginal person to win a gold medal when she won with her Hockeyroos team at the Olympics in 1996 and then transferred her skills to the track in 1998 when she won gold with her 4 x 100 m relay team at the Commonwealth Games. 

Israel Folau, Sonny Bill Williams and Brad Thorn are great examples of Australian Rugby League footballers with prior experience who transferred their skills from elite Australian Rugby League to Rugby Union. Sonny Bill even transferred his strength and agility from Rugby League to professional boxing. 

An athlete’s ability refers to the ease of performing movements and performances. It is often known as talent and is characterised by fluid movements and accurate execution of the skill. It refers to the athlete’s competency in a particular skill, a particular sport or even movement in general. 

Most often the term is used to refer to the person’s natural talent. Athletes with greater abilities learn and process new skills faster than athletes with lower abilities. They often will reach the higher levels of skill acquisition faster and for a wide variety of skills that are related to each other.

Ability is often a combination of characteristics in the athlete. This includes perception or the capacity to read a game, sport or competition. Allowing the athlete to view things before they happen increases their skill performance by providing more time to execute the skill. It also includes reaction time and intelligence. Athlete’s with a sense of acuity or sharpness also have greater ability as they refine the skill more thoroughly than those without this characteristic. These help the athlete readily execute the skill as required and result in them having great ability.

There are three stages of skill acquisition that sit along a continuum of skill learning. The cognitive stage is characterised by frequent errors and is the stage when the learner has to think a lot about the skill and how to execute it. They also require lots of frequent feedback.

The associative stage is the largest and longest stage. It is characterised by lots of practice. As the athlete progresses towards the next stage errors become less frequent and smaller.

The final stage is the autonomous stage. This stage is characterised by few if any errors that are minor. An athlete at this stage of skill acquisition can think about other aspects of competition and not think at all about the skill itself.

The cognitive stage of skill acquisition is characterised by mental processes and the athlete thinking about the skill. The athlete at this stage needs to think about their body position, which muscles they are contracting and what the movement should look like. The athlete is thinking about what they are doing at each section of skill execution, resulting in a non fluid movement.

Athletes at this stage have large frequent errors and have a robotic jerky movement. Such an athlete may miss the ball that they are attempting to kick completely, or kick it backwards instead of forwards. For example, visualise a toddler learning to walk or a 3 year old trying to kick a ball. They watch, try and mimic movements and get frustrated at their errors.

A coach needs to provide lots of feedback and demonstrations during the cognitive stage of skill acquisition. They might use videos or other visualisations to help show the athlete what the skill looks like when done well. A coach will often break the skill down into its various sections to be put together as the athlete progresses in their learning.

As is often the case in learning a new skill, frequent short periods of exposure are best for its development. 20-40 min three to five times a week is a great amount of practice for learning a new skill. Even the training session itself could break this new skill up by including skills the athlete does well, to ensure they are getting positive results as well as they learn the new skill. This makes distributed part practice the best practice method for the athlete at the cognitive stage of skill acquisition.

The associative stage of skill acquisition is when the athlete has progressed from thinking about what they are doing to thinking about how they do the skill. This means they are no longer thinking about body position, but where they are passing the ball or hitting the ball. They begin to think about end results rather than just on whether they manage to kick or hit the ball.

The associative stage of skill acquisition sees the movement become more fluid and smooth. There are still errors though as they move along the continuum these are not as large or as frequent as the cognitive stage of skill acquisition.

During this stage the athlete can begin to provide some of their own feedback, but they still benefit from immediate feedback concerning their technique provided by a coach as well as knowledge of results. The athlete can adjust their technique and begin to increase the complexity of the context in which the skill is executed. For example, hitting or kicking a moving ball rather than a stationary one.

During the associative stage the athlete needs lots of practice that is whole and normally massed, though if they get bored distributed should be used. This stage often lasts a long time, with many athletes not progressing to the final autonomous stage of skill acquisition.

The autonomous stage of skill acquisition is when the athlete no longer thinks at all about the skill. In this stage the movement comes naturally and the athlete can focus on other aspects of the competition, such as who to pass the ball to, how to beat the defensive player, or where to hit the forehand.

The autonomous athlete knows what the movement feels like and can provide their own feedback, though external feedback on skill execution may be beneficial. Coaching an autonomous athlete usually focuses on the execution of the skill under pressure and with various cognitive processes being completed at the same time. This is usually done through small-sided games or competition simulations, such as sparing.

The autonomous stage of skill acquisition is the mastery stage and athletes who reach this stage exhibit characteristics of skilled performers. These characteristics include: kinaesthetic sense, good anticipation, consistency of performance and sound technique. Such athletes can correct their own movements midway through the movement to adjust to oppositional movements or environmental interference. They consistently perform the skill well with minor errors occurring rarely.

This final stage of skill acquisition is not reached by all athletes. Many remain in the associative stage throughout their sport playing life. Athlete’s who become elite, have usually reached the autonomous stage of skill acquisition.

A skill can be: open or closed, gross or fine, discrete, serial or continuous and self or externally paced. Each classification sits along a continuum, with skills varying in their degree of any selection. Skills are classified by selecting one from each choice. 

An open skill is performed in a constantly changing environment (weather, opposition, surface) such as kicking a goal in Australian Rules Football. A closed skill is performed in the same conditions every time, such as weight lifting. Open skills take longer to learn than closed skills.

A gross skill requires large muscle groups (legs, back, chest) such as running. A fine skill uses small or isolated muscles (wrist flexors, bicep) such as shooting. Fine skills are easier to learn than gross skills.

A discrete skill has a clear beginning and end, such as a flip in gymnastics. A serial skill combines a number of separate smaller skills to perform the larger more complex skill such as a lay up in basketball, which combines dribbling, catching, jumping and shooting. A continuous skill repeats a specific movement over and over again such as running. Serial skills are harder to learn than discrete skills, which are often harder than continuous skills because continuous skills are repeated all the time.

A self-paced skill has its timing and speed determined by the performer, such as a tennis serve. An externally paced skill has its timing and speed determined by external factors like opposing players or music, such as rhythmic gymnastics or batting in baseball. Externally paced skills are harder to learn than self-paced.

Practice methods for the different stages of learning. They can be massed or distributed, whole or part, blocked or random.

Massed practice is a continuous practice session, with smaller rest periods than practice intervals and works well for skilled and motivated athletes. Massed practice suits skills that are exciting or frequently used in performance, such as uneven bar transitions or passing in football.

Distributed practice has short periods of practice with longer breaks from the skill rehearsal, which can be rehearsal of another skill or a break for feedback. It is often used for less skilled and less motivated athletes and is helpful in teaching boring skills, such as passing a basketball. This practice method can also be used for the more difficult skills that need to be broken up or when lots of feedback is necessary.

Whole practice is when the skill is practised in its entirety and is often used for discrete and continuous skills. This practice method is good for teaching swimming or running.

Part practice is when the skill is broken down into its smaller parts and each part is practised in isolation before being joined together. It is often used for teaching serial skills that have smaller skills that make up the larger skill such as a basketball layup.

Blocked practice focuses on one skill in a session, repeated over and over. This allows the skill to be refined and reinforced.

Random practice incorporates a combination of different skills presented randomly in a session. This may delay the refining of skills, but improves transferability in different contexts.

Performance elements, including decision-making, strategic and tactical development

It is vital for performance that an athlete can perform their skills under pressure and respond to their environment. Decision making, strategic and tactical development are performance elements that enhance an athlete's ability to perform.

Decision-making refers to the various decisions made by any athlete during a performance. These include where to hit the ball, who to pass to and when, where to kick the ball and where to stand defensively. Decision-making can be improved by demonstrations or good decision-making, asking questions of the players such as “how is space created here?”, practising in game-like scenarios, being allowed to explore various scenarios by changing oppositional tactics or strategies and encouraging creativity in the athlete. The more opportunities athletes have to make decisions in games, the better they will get at it.

Strategy is the overall method used to achieve the goal, normally winning the competition and includes where an athlete should be at a particular time and what they should do, while tactics are about gaining an advantage over the opposing player normally connected with game sense and decision making. 

Tactics include things like moving into space, marking a particular player or using a cut out pass. Strategic and tactical development comes through technical efficiency, understanding the game, and good execution. Players who have good technical skills are more likely to make a successful pass or shot while under pressure and making decisions. Players who understand how the game works and which strategies or tactics are better in various situations are more successful in executing the strategy or tactic and selecting the right one for success. 

The strategy or tactic must then be practised to ensure timing is correct and execution is smooth and successful. This often requires the strategy to be clear, each individual player to know their role within the strategy and then learning to execute the strategy using various tactics through practise in various situations, which will also develop good decision-making.

Similarities

Strategy

Given that strategy is making the plan to get to the goal being set it is often confused with the specific steps taken. Tactics are the specific day-to-day steps and actions placed. Sometimes this can seem like the plan put in place and they do overlap, but the strategy is generally much broader in focus than tactics. Strategy must inform the team's tactics. If it doesn’t the team or athlete is likely to end up a bit lost and confused because really they are not working towards anything specific.

Tactics

Tactics then must flow out of the strategy. There is no point coming up with specific actions to do each day or throughout a game if it does not line up with the strategy (the plan for how you will win). If teams just put favourite plays together or constantly go to favourite moves this is likely to not help a team in the game or long term in the competition. 

For example, if an athlete often serves down the line in tennis and they do this all the time with no strategy it may be effective to start with, but if the opponent is expecting this or loves to return serves that go down the line with a high percentage of winners it is going to be a bad choice. If the athlete uses strategy to identify this strength they will break it up and serve more to the outside of the court, while also mixing it up with the serves down the middle.

Differences

Strategy

Strategy is laying down the goals and making a plan to get there. In sport, this is something like having the goal to win the season or win the match as well as making a plan to achieve this, such as developing an athlete’s power, working on camaraderie and selecting the right players. 

Strategy often requires a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. The coach might analyse the team and plan to utilise strengths and develop weaknesses. They may also analyse the opposition to identify the best approach to be used in the game to win. Perhaps the team has a weak tackler to target.

Tactics

Tactics are more the simple day to day steps or actions taken to achieve the goal of the strategy. If an athlete is developing power they need to consider what they are going to do to achieve this. Weight training, plyometrics, how often could be considered. If a team is working on camaraderie they need to consider how they are doing to do this. Going on a camp together, eating meals together and doing specific team bonding challenges could be explored. 

In a specific game a team might consider the set plays they practise in order to target the weak tackler or who will make the starting line-up and who the coach might put in if someone gets injured.

Feedback is important for the acquisition of skill by the athlete. It provides direction, goals and helps the athlete to adjust their performance and skill execution as they progress through the stages of skill acquisition.

Feedback can be internal or external, concurrent or delayed and knowledge of results or performance. Internal (task-intrinsic) comes from the performer and how the movement felt and relies on proprioception. A soccer player feeling that they did not connect with the ball correctly is internal. External (augmented) comes from outside the body and includes sounds, videos or a coach. An AFL player scores a goal from 40 m out.

Feedback can be concurrent or delayed. Concurrent occurs during the execution of the skill, such as a coach stopping a golfer mid-swing to correct their grip on the handle. Delayed is received after the skill is completed, such as video analysis of a baseball pitcher's performance.

Knowledge of results is feedback that provides information about the outcome of the skill execution, such as scoring a goal or hitting a six. 

Knowledge of performance is information provided about the process of movement normally provided externally after its completion, such as a coach giving technical advice on the tennis serve, telling the player to drop their shoulder later.