Learning Ontogenetic Skills In American Football

Learning ontogenetic skills launched me into the context-specific period on the mountain of development. These skills were specific to my individual life experiences and the tasks I wanted to perform. For example, when I turned 9 I was enrolled in tackle football for children. American football is not nearly as popular around the world as it is in the United States. While playing, I had to revert to my base level of skill by building on the development gained during the fundamental motor patterns mentioned earlier. Locomotion skills such as running had to be built within the context of football. This made “running” to become “route running” specifically. The difference between these two terms is that route running follows specific steps with

These arose as individual, environmental, and task constraints. During my context-specific years, I grew taller later than most of my peers (individual and structural) giving me a disadvantage in terms of gaining experience on the field. My smaller frame put in danger and limited the amount of object reception I could engage in with kids my age due to fear of injury. This would be a rate limiter due to hurting my development of skillful catching. Environmentally, the constraint of being enrolled in youth football is a rate enhancer because it improved my ontogenetic skills and allowed me to supplement my catching with context-specific training. Finally, the task constraint of wearing pads and a helmet can be seen as a rate limiter and enhancer depending on the situation. During a game, it is a limiter because it is harder to catch with a helmet and shoulder pads on due to there restricting movement, however, outside of a game it is an enhancer because learning to catch with items impeding your movement will train you to catch better without those items impeding your

In other words, deliberate practice (individual and functional), being told by my coach to catch 100 footballs every day (environment) and learning to specifically catch only a football (task) are all constraints that have either hindered or helped my development. I had plenty of time to deliberately practice owing to the fact that my only obligation was to go to school. In view of that fact, the deliberate practice became a rate enhancer and was very important for my development due to gaining immediate feedback from whoever was throwing to me and having a knowledge of the results afterward. Catching 100 footballs was also a rate enhancer because it relates to deliberate practice. My coach told me to do this which made me truly understand the nuances of catching. Finally, catching a football in particular is a rate limiter due to the fact that there are other objects I will need to catch. A football is a very specific shape leading to a different technique being used to grasp it compared to a baseball or a