If you of average height, strong, good coordination and have an abundance of fast twitch fibres in your legs then you have the natural ability to be a sprinter. We inherit ability from our parents. Open skills are where you cannot control what happens next. An example of this is in football. Where you cannot control what happens next you use open skills.
Closed skills take place in a fixed environment where the athlete has the situation under control.
Where you can control what happens next you use closed skills. A skill continuum should be seen as a line where at one end the skill is open and the other end of the line the skill is closed. For a high jumper the athlete has both open and closed skills. On a skill continuum line the football player would be placed at the open end, the high jumper would be placed approximately in the middle of the line and the gymnast at the closed end. The following Sports Coach pages should be read in conjunction with this page.