Fitts’ Law in Motion
Person standing looking out into the distance with tree to their right.
Fitts' Law can be quite helpful in sports if utilized effectively. The applications of this law come from what it speaks to, the speed-accuracy trade-off. When applied not only to understanding human movement, there are benefits from the perspective of learning and the integration of complex motor skills for players, coaches, and consultants. Okay so neat. What does this mean? Keep reading and you will find out.
Fitts’ Law in Sports Action
Fitts (1954) studied, wrote, and published a systematic analysis of one aspect of voluntary movement that addresses speed and accuracy in performance. What Fitts shared with people was that there is an inverse relationship between movement difficulty and the time needed to perform the movement. This has been demonstrated in studies that show a speed-accuracy trade-off in soccer, with faster kicks having less accuracy (Hunter et al., 2018). Let’s look at an example from soccer, since that sport has already come up, that directly speaks to Fitts' Law. Imagine a soccer player being asked to practice scoring on a penalty kick so that the ball travels as fast as possible to three different-sized areas of the goal. Fitts' Law would predict that the ball kicked to the largest area would have the highest speed. In contrast, the ball kicked to the smallest area will have the slowest speed. What typically happens in the speed-accuracy trade-off is that the penalty kicker who kicks the ball at the fastest speed possible will end up with an inaccurate kick. However, the kicker who focuses on accuracy by kicking the ball to a small part of the goal may end up with a kick that is too slow to elude the goalkeeper. The ultimate goal, however, is to be a kicker who can kick accurately and quickly in the heat of a game. This is no small ask. The piece that makes things even more interesting is that there are exceptions to Fitts’’ Law. Fitts' Law can be violated by ballistic movements (Hunter et al., 2018; Molina et al., 2019; Schmidt & Lee, 2013). Ballistic movements are movements that can be performed with maximal velocity and acceleration. In case you are curious about examples of ballistic movements a few examples are below. I know that I was curious when I first heard the word. You are not alone.
Basketball - throwing a pitch or taking a wing
Boxing - throwing a punch
Hockey - taking a slapshot
Basketball - taking a jump shot or jumping to complete a slam dunk or layup
Football - tackling a runner or throwing the football
Role in Learning and Integration for Novice and Experienced Performers
Now that we have a base understanding of Fitts’ Law let’s dive into understanding how motor skill acquisition or learning happens as our next step. Motor skill acquisition occurs in three stages: the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage (Fitts & Peterson, 1964).
Cognitive Stage:
The cognitive stage is verbal-cognitive due to the information being conveyed and the acquisition of that information (Fernandes et al., 2022; Schmidt & Lee, 2005). In essence, a person is working to process information in hopes of cognitively understanding the motor movement requirements and parameters.
Associative Stage:
During the associative stage, there is less verbal information, fewer gains in performance, conscious performance, skill adjustments, disjointed movement, and a longer length of completion time (Fernandes et al., 2022; Schmidt & Lee, 2005). This stage is where a person is working on transforming what to do into how to do it by addressing the problem of learning how to perform a skill and transferring declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge.
Yes, here it comes again, a terminology breakdown.
Declarative knowledge describes objects, events, or processes and their attributes and relationship to each other.
Procedural knowledge is the type of knowledge that addresses how one performs a desired skill or task and addresses the methods or procedures.
Autonomous Stage:
The autonomous stage is where motor performance is mainly automatic and the cognitive demands are minimal, freeing the person to process other information (Fernandes et al., 2022; Schmidt & Lee, 2005). While this stage has distinct advantages, one possible concern is that incorrect movements can be maintained and reinforced. Yips!
These stages help guide how Fitts' Law informs the role of motor learning and integration. For example, when novice soccer players are beginning their journey, they are more likely to be in the cognitive and associative stages of learning, where guidance, slow-motion drills, and feedback are effective coaching strategies to learn new motor skills. Within that space of slow-motion drills and drills, in general, an athlete may benefit from drills and practices where the size and shape of the net are varied in addition to varying the distance from the net and adding in barriers around the goal. These will provide the opportunity for athletes to build adaptation around accuracy. Furthermore, in these earlier stages, providing an understanding of how Fitts' Law works may help inform goal setting, which would help direct motivation and training. If all goes well in these early stages, players may have the advantage of error-free learning in the initial stages of learning (Adams 1976; 1987) and build a good foundation.
Transitioning to a more experienced soccer player, assuming a good foundation with few bad habits, the focus switches to more refinement since the skills are automatic in the autonomous stage. Here drills may have barriers and even greater distance changes, but they may have the addition of increased speed with which the players must perform them. One of the challenges that may arise for someone in the autonomous stage is the potential for distracting thoughts to enter the mind, which may pull attention away from the game. This is a place where it may be of benefit to also include skills around mindfulness. Ultimately, the hope for the player is to reach an appropriate speed-accuracy diversity at the neuron and muscle levels to encourage the nervous system to adapt to improve accuracy and speed (Nakahira et al., 2019).
So what does this example mean to you? If you happen to be a coach reading this post, you may now have an idea of the type of drills to focus on for your athletes depending on their stage. However, if you are an athlete, dancer, or learner you take advantage of understanding these stages to help yourself develop.
take action today moment:
Take some time to let all the information you just read sink in. It is a lot. This post is very dense. Take advantage of resources below to also help you. It is information dense because it was essential to provide a background and base. When you are ready, think about your journey as an athlete, coach, dancer, etc. and see how you can sharpen your learning process by taking advantage of different stages. Maybe you are just beginning and need to do more drills. Or, maybe, you are an experienced athlete and you need to practice your mindfulness and sport psychology skills. No matter your level you can take action to improve your learning.
Learn More About Motivation:
References
Adams, J. A. (1976). Issues for a closed-loop theory of motor learning. In G. E. Stelmach (Ed.), Motor control (pp. 87-107). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-665950-4.50009-2
Adams, J. A. (1987). Historical review and appraisal of research on the learning, retention, and transfer of human motor skills. Psychological Bulletin, 101(1), 41–74. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.101.1.41
Fernandes, L. A., Nogueira, N. G., Figueiredo, L. S., Ferreira, B. P., Couto, C. R., Torres, N. L., & Lage, G. M. (2022). Stages of motor learning and the teaching-learning process in swimming. Research, Society and Development, 11(3), e26311326201-e26311326201.
Fitts, P. M. (1954). The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47(6), 381–391. doi:10.1037/h0055392
Fitts, P. M., & Peterson, J. R. (1964). Information capacity of discrete motor responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 67(2), 103-112.
Hunter, A. H., Angilletta Jr, M. J., Pavlic, T., Lichtwark, G., & Wilson, R. S. (2018). Modeling the two-dimensional accuracy of soccer kicks. Journal of Biomechanics, 72, 159-166.
Molina, S. L., Bott, T. S., & Stodden, D. F. (2019). Applications of the speed–accuracy trade-off and impulse-variability theory for teaching ballistic motor skills. Journal of Motor Behavior, 51(6), 690-697. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222895.2019.1565526
Nakahira, Y., Liu, Q., Bernat, N., Sejnowski, T., & Doyle, J. (2019, July). Theoretical foundations for layered architectures and speed-accuracy tradeoffs in sensorimotor control [Confrence session]. 2019 American Control Conference (ACC), Philadelphia, PA, United States.
Schmidt, R. A., & Lee, T. D. (2005). Motor learning and control: A behavioral emphasis. Human Kinetics.
Schmidt, R., & Lee, T. (2013). Motor learning and performance with web study guide: From principles to application (5th ed.). Retrieved from https://redshelf.com