Learning stages in Motor Learning

Stages of Learning

• The stages of learning are phases that athletes experience as they progress through skills.
• As a coach, if you are aware of your athletes ‘level of readiness’, you can help them advance more quickly. (Wood, 2009-2015)

What happens during cognitive stage??

• The learner takes time to think about the routine of the skill.
• A lot of gross errors occur during performing the skill.
• The timing and the coordination is not right and the movement is not cohesive.
• The learner still has not mastered the mechanics of the skill.

CONT'

• For example, before a child masters walking, they will most likely look a bit awkward and stumble a few times.

Associative Stage…

• During this stage, the learner begins to demonstrate a more refined movement through practice.
• They can focus on “how to do” moving on from the “what to do” in the first stage.
• Visual cues become less important and proprioceptive cues become very important.

CONT'

• The learner still has gross motor errors, timing and accuracy problem. But the mechanics has improved.
• For example still using child walking. In this stage, you may see a child taking longer, more controlled steps, narrowing their base of support, and allowing their arms to relax at their sides.

Automatic Stage

• Mastered the skill and the motor skill learned will be automatic for execution.
• Consistent in the performance and less errors occurs.
• For example, a child will be able to walk in an environment that can be predicted such as house or in a playground with full of kids playing that could be predicted.