Individual Sports

One of the ways that a community can promote a healthy lifestyle is by organizing sporting activities for individuals to take part in. Participating in sports satisfies your needs for physical fitness and healthy competition. In individual sports, such as tennis and martial arts, you can engage in one-on-one competition with another individual. Other individual sports, like track and field, allow you to compete against a score as well as against another individual. When you compete in individual sports, such as distance running, your competitor may be another individual or the expectations that you have set for yourself.

Participating in individual sports can help you maintain an overall healthy lifestyle. You can improve your cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, and flexibility. It can also enhance your social and emotional health by increasing your self-esteem and independence.

Individual Sports

Many sports are available in your community, depending on location and resources. When it comes to individual sports, which sport would you want to participate in? What kind of equipment and skills are involved in that sport, and how is the winner determined? In this interactivity, click each of the tabs to learn more about several individual sports. Click the player button to begin.

View a printable version of the interactivity.

 

Developing a Practice Plan to Enhance Your Performance

Competition is a component of every sport. In order to be competitive, you must be proficient in certain skills. For example, if you participate in martial arts, you must be able to perform a high kick. To accomplish the goal of mastering the high kick, you should set aside time to practice this specific skill. In this interactivity, you will follow Tonya as she develops a practice plan to enhance her performance in tennis. Click each of the tabs to learn more about Tonya’s step-by-step plan. Click the player button to begin.

View a printable version of the interactivity.

Refining Your Motor Skills

When participating in an individual sport that is unfamiliar to you, you may have to learn new motor skills. Motor skills refer to skills that involve physical movement of your body. If you decide to begin participating in boxing, you initially will not be familiar with a lot of the moves specific to this individual sport. For example, you may not know how to correctly execute a jab or an uppercut. Your mind and body will progress through a learning process as you work to acquire these new motor skills.

During the early stages of acquiring a new motor skill, your movements are slow and focused. Your mind works diligently to direct your body on how to correctly execute these new moves. As you progress through the process of learning a new sport, your movements will become smoother and require less focus for you to execute them. When you reach the point of mastery, your movements will be accurate and automatic. Your focus will be concentrated more on the sport you are participating in ("Where should I throw the ball?") and less on how to move your body ("How do I throw the ball accurately?). Remembering that your mind and body are working through this process when you are learning a new motor skill may help to alleviate some frustration that you may encounter as you participate in individual sports.

 

Individual Sports Review

Now that you have explored individual sports and how to implement a practice plan for improving a skill, it is time to review your knowledge and practice what you have learned. In this non-graded activity, read the set of directions associated with each question and provide your answers. Click the player button to get started.