Skill Related Components of Physical Fitness You have arrived at Skill Related Components of Physical Fitness and you will be learning about the skill related components of fitness. This is for the Common Core Standard called NPA 4.1 How to execute exercise programs with safety and effectiveness. Common Core Standard NPA 4.1 Execute exercise programs with safety and effectiveness

Think about… If you were trying to get better at a specific sport or a specific skill how would you go about it? Do you ever wonder how some people are born with a lot of muscle, skill and coordination, while other people are not? Well since some of us aren’t born with a lot of muscle, skill and coordination, there is good news. We can be trained to improve those things through practice.

Skill Related Fitness Components Fitness components important for success in skillful activities and athletic events. Have you ever checked out a 1 year old child who is trying to learn to walk? It can be very entertaining watching them. They stumble around and wobble and often fall down. It can take several months before they become proficient at it. Practice is the only way to get better. Now apply that same practice mentality to learning to hit a baseball. Not every person is going to walk up there and hit a home run the first time they get up to bat. It is a combination of good form and other factors. What are those factors? Let’s find out!

Skill Related Components of Physical Fitness AGILITY BALANCE COORDINATION POWER REACTION TIME SPEED Here are those 6 factors! Every athlete in every sport uses these skills repetitively, although they might not be skilled at all of them. It can take from weeks to years to master some of them. Practice and proper training are the ways to improve these skills. So lets examine these skills a little more closely.

Agility The ability to change body position and direction quickly and efficiently. Football is a great example of having to change direction quickly. Sometimes in just one play, an athlete will change directions 4 or 5 times to get away from oncoming tacklers. Agility can be improved by strengthening your leg and core muscles. You will see a demonstration in the next slide.

Examples of Agility A test to measure agility would be the SHUTTLE RUN TEST Visit the link below for a video of an agility improving ladder drill http://www.ehow.com/video_2368820_two-feet-agility-drill-sports.html Check out this video on improving your agility.

Balance The ability to maintain the body without falling over The sense of balance actually comes from the inner ear. There are receptors there that let us know how we relate to our environment in a physical sense. When a person spins around in a circle really fast, the fluid in the inner ear gets disrupted and that is why a person gets dizzy and falls down.

Examples of Balance Skateboarding Surfing Bicycle Riding Balance Beam Think of all the messages coming from your muscles to your brain while balancing. That information will help stabilize you while you are catching a huge wave while surfing. Our brains are amazing! A test to measure balance would be the STORK STAND TEST.

Coordination The use of the nervous and the muscular systems to produce correct, graceful, and harmonious body movements. Coordination can be achieved through practice, however some lucky people are born with it, when it comes to particular skills. Dancing is a great example of coordination. The movements in dance are very graceful, correct and harmonious. You can often tell when someone is not a good dancer. Their movements lack fluidity and they may resemble the 1 year old child who is trying to learn to walk. Not pretty!

Examples of Coordination Golf swing, tennis serve, shooting a basketball, swinging a bat, doing a flip. These are skills that take practice to achieve at a high level. The hands, eyes and/or feet work together to achieve a smooth fluid motion. Coordination can be achieved through practice, however some lucky people are born with it, when it comes to particular skills. A test to measure coordination would be the WALL TOSS TEST

Power The ability to produce force in a short amount of time If you are a boxer, then power is very important. If you were throwing punches with a small amount of power, you would not be in the sport of boxing very long.

Examples of Power Jumping, shot put, spiking/throwing/hitting a ball. Video of fitness training for speed and power http://www.ehow.com/video_4956791_fitness-training-speed-power.html In the case of this baseball player, he needed a great amount of power in a short amount of time to leap up the wall and catch this ball. A test to measure power would be the VERTICAL JUMP TEST

Reaction Time The time required to begin a response to a given event A test to measure reaction time is called the CLICK REACTION TIME TEST If you think about video games, they are almost 100 percent about reaction time. If you are correct in your reaction, then you are typically successful in a game. In real life sports, there are many situations where you have less than a second to react to a situation. This can take a bit of practice to master and you will also need to remember to have good form when performing the activity.

Examples of Reaction Time In baseball, some pitchers throw a 90 mile per hour fastball. That only gives you .20 seconds to hit the ball from the time it leaves his hand.. Play this game to get a sense of what it is like. http://www.exploratorium.edu/baseball/reactiontime.html Be sure to try this reaction test game to see how fast you react to a 90 mile an hour baseball pitch. Not very easy, be warned!

Speed The ability to propel the body or a part of the body rapidly form one point to another. If you have ever played tag with your brother or sister, then you know that speed is essential skill to have, so that you don’t get caught. This skill applies to many other sports and activities. It can also apply to your arm (swinging a bat) or leg (kicking a ball) and not just your body as a whole.

Examples of Speed 100 meter dash Swinging a bat to meet a baseball Hitting a serve in tennis/Returning a serve A fast break in basketball Badminton is the fastest sport in the world. The birdie ends up leaving the racquet at an estimated 206 miles per hour. You would have to swing the racquet really fast to get that speed. It would also be quite a challenge to return something coming at you that fast. A test to measure speed is called the 40 YARD DASH TEST

Skill Related Fitness Components Help you to learn specific skills that will make you better in a particular sport. We have finally covered all 6 of the skill related components of fitness. The key word here being “SKILL.”