Abstract

We will argue that a lack of physical skill is a powerful limitation to an active lifestyle. While many possess the willpower to perform daily exercise routines to ward off disease and disability, physical activity with a play component makes it easier to enjoy and increases the likelihood of adherence over the course of a lifetime. Having sufficient physical skills to perform at high levels offers multiple avenues to satiate the human need for regular physical activity without being limited to cardiovascular and strength training exercises and machines. This paper will present research done by the authors on a novel method of skill acquisition teaching. Archery was the medium used to explore the use of Directed Mimicry (DM) (McClung and Ambrose, 2010) as a method for the teaching of physical skills. DM is used to direct the attention of students to particular parts of a skill after which they are asked to mimic what they have seen without the aid of verbal instruction. Typical teaching involves the simultaneous use of verbal and visual cues to present motor skills (ST). This requires two perceptual systems to be in play at the same time, auditory and visual, which may or may not enhance each other to improve the learning compared to using them in isolation. DM is a method developed to allow a easier path toward skill acquisition. In a previous study looking at racquetball skills that used a single trial there was no difference between the methods. In this study there also was no difference between groups on the first trial. It was only after multiple trials (four days of instruction) that we began to see differences between the groups with the DM group consistently scoring better than the ST group.