Physical development consists of two major components: physical
fitness and motor skill development.
Physical fitness includes
strength, endurance, flexibility and body composition.
Motor or
sports skills include locomotion (running, walking, leaping, climbing),
manipulation (throwing, kicking, catching, bouncing), and stability (bending,
twisting, rolling, dodging).
Mastery of a range of motor skills, combined
with good overall physical fitness, is critical to the healthy development of
a child and forms the basis of their athletic competence.
Great Play helps
each Player reach his or her full physical potential by building a broad-based
foundation of skill, fitness and confidence that will last a lifetime.
The Science of Learning Motor Skills
To perform a tasks or movement, our brain sends signals to our motor units
(individual nerves and collections of muscle fibers) at precise intervals to
orchestrate the contraction of muscles throughout our body.
Learning a
motor skill is like writing a computer program to a disk – the
program, imprinted on the brain, plays back as a motor reflex. The method
of imprinting a motor skill “program” on the brain is repetition
(i.e., “practice, practice, practice”).
Over time, basic motor skills
can be combined and built upon to master more complex skills.
Implications for Teaching Motor Skills
There are several implications for learning, based on the way our bodies acquire
new motor skills. To achieve the greatest success, children should:
- Start with proper form or technique
- Get plenty of touch time (repetitions) to “program” their mind
and body with the technique
- Build up from a solid base of fundamental skills to the more complex skills
over time, seizing key developmental windows
Using Proper Technique
Learning a skill improperly is, in many ways, worse than not learning it at
all. Instructors of complex motor skill sports, like golf, tennis, skiing,
baseball, etc., often describe having to get new students to “unlearn” their
current technique in order to improve – or taking a step back in order
to take a step forward.
Starting off with proper form is essential, particularly
for the foundation skills that form the basis for the complex skills children
need to learn later. Practice
doesn’t make perfect, “perfect practices makes perfect.”
Great Play Approach: We start each class with skill development, to encourage
proper technique; then we coach Players throughout the class through “directed
play” to help ensure proper form is being learned.
Getting Plenty of Touch Time
Movement skills become ingrained in “muscle memory” through repetition.
Children cannot master motor skills by watching or listening or standing around
while others get their turn. They master them by doing – over
and over and over again. Proper technique, repeated extensively, leads
to mastery over time.
Great Play Approach: Our games are designed to maximize touch time and the
ability to explore and master new skills. We also encourage learning to continue
outside of the Arena, with parents and friends.
Building Skills During Key Developmental Windows
Just as the brain is ready for certain types of academic material (e.g., reading,
counting or foreign languages) at certain stages, so is the mind and body ready
to learn certain kinds of motor skills and make different types of physical adaptations
at certain ages.
To achieve full potential, new skills training must be
consistently introduced when the child is physically ready to learn them. Introducing
new skills too early will lead to failure and can be discouraging. However,
missing the opportunity to introduce a skill for which a child is ready can delay
or prevent them from ultimately achieving their potential.
Children need to build
a strong foundation of fundamental skills in order to be able to learn and perform
more complex sports skills as they mature. Failure to capitalize on the time
sensitive, movement-skill period of learning in childhood makes it difficult
to subsequently attain higher skill levels later.
As children mature,
the fundamental movement skills learned previously are applied as specialized
skills in a variety of sports, games, and recreational activities. For
example, the fundamental skill of striking an object in an underhand, sidearm,
or overarm pattern is progressively refined and later applied in sport and recreational
pursuits such as golf, tennis, and baseball.
Great Play Approach: Our curriculum is based on continuously introducing
and mastering age-appropriate skills through play – from building a solid
foundation at younger ages, through developing complex movement skills over time,
using our SCORE™ training methods.
Children who learn proper technique, get plenty of practice, and build up from
foundation skills to complex skills at the proper developmental times will be
in a good position to reach their full potential.
