How do fitness, skills and tactics combine to shape a performance?
The physical factors that impact on performance, including their three areas of fitness, skills and tactics, and the positive and negative effects each can have on performance.
An SQA Higher Physical Education answer on the physical factors impacting on performance, covering the three areas (fitness, skills and tactics or composition) and the positive and negative effects each can have on a performer.
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What this dot point is asking
The SQA wants you to explain what the physical factor is, identify its three areas (fitness, skills, tactics or composition), and explain how each can have a positive and a negative impact on performance. This is the foundation for the most heavily examined factor, which feeds directly into the performance development process.
The answer
What physical factors are
Fitness
Skills
Tactics and composition
Examples in context
A badminton singles player shows the three areas together. Fitness, especially agility, speed and endurance, lets them cover the court and still move sharply in a long third game. Skills, a reliable overhead clear, drop shot and smash, give them the options to attack and defend. Tactics, moving the opponent around the court and attacking the space behind them, turn those skills and that fitness into won rallies. A weakness in any one area shows: poor endurance and the late-game movement slows; an unreliable backhand and the opponent targets it; weak tactics and the player hits good shots to the wrong places. Explaining how the three areas combine, and how a weakness in one is exploited, is what lifts a Higher answer.
Try this
Q1. Name the three areas of the physical factor. [2 marks]
- Cue. Fitness; skills; tactics or composition.
Q2. Explain one positive and one negative way the physical factor can impact on performance. [4 marks]
- Cue. Positive: strong endurance maintains quality late in a game. Negative: a skill weakness is targeted by an opponent.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of SQA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
SQA Higher 20224 marksExplain how physical factors can have a positive and a negative impact on performance.Show worked answer →
A -mark explain question rewarding one developed positive and one developed negative point across the areas of fitness, skills and tactics.
Positive: a high level of cardiorespiratory endurance lets a midfielder keep working into the final minutes, so they still close down opponents and support attacks late in the game.
Negative: a weakness in a skill, such as an unreliable weaker foot, means a player can be forced onto it by defenders and loses possession. The discriminator is explaining how each changes performance, not just naming the area.
SQA Higher 20196 marksDescribe one area of the physical factor and explain how it affected your performance.Show worked answer →
A -mark describe-and-explain question, roughly half description and half explanation. Choose one area and treat it in depth.
Describe the area, for example skills: the range and quality of techniques a performer can execute, including their consistency under pressure.
Then explain the effect in a named activity: strong passing and first touch in football meant retaining possession and building attacks, while a weakness in tackling meant being beaten in one-on-one defending and conceding chances. Marks come from the developed link to performance.
Related dot points
- Fitness as an area of the physical factor: physical fitness components (endurance, strength, speed, flexibility), skill-related fitness components (agility, balance, coordination, reaction time, power), mental fitness, and how strengths and weaknesses in fitness affect performance.
An SQA Higher Physical Education answer on fitness as a physical factor, covering physical fitness components, skill-related fitness components, mental fitness, and how strengths and weaknesses in fitness affect performance in named activities.
- Skills as an area of the physical factor: the qualities of a skilled performance, the classification of skills (simple to complex, open and closed), the stages of learning (cognitive, associative, autonomous), and how skill quality affects performance.
An SQA Higher Physical Education answer on skills as a physical factor, covering the qualities of a skilled performance, the classification of skills, the cognitive, associative and autonomous stages of learning, and how skill quality affects performance.
- Tactics and composition as an area of the physical factor: how tactics outwit an opponent in games and how composition structures a performance activity, the strengths and weaknesses they target, and how good and poor tactics affect performance.
An SQA Higher Physical Education answer on tactics and composition as a physical factor, covering how tactics outwit an opponent in games, how composition structures a performance activity, and how good and poor tactics or composition affect performance.
- Methods of collecting information about the factors impacting on performance, including the difference between qualitative and quantitative methods, examples such as observation schedules, video analysis, standardised tests, questionnaires and match analysis, and why a performer uses more than one method.
An SQA Higher Physical Education answer on the methods of collecting information about the factors impacting on performance, covering qualitative and quantitative methods, examples such as observation schedules, video analysis and standardised tests, and why more than one method is used.
- Approaches to developing performance, including how a performer selects approaches that match the factor and the stage of learning, principles such as progression and specificity, and examples of approaches for the physical, mental, emotional and social factors.
An SQA Higher Physical Education answer on the approaches to developing performance, covering how to select approaches that match the factor and stage of learning, principles such as progression and specificity, and examples for each of the four factors.
Sources & how we know this
- SQA Higher Physical Education Course Specification — SQA (2019)