Which characteristic best describes an open skill and its practice implications?

• A. Open skills occur in unpredictable contexts; practice should include variability and similar decision-making pressures.
• B. Open skills occur in stable contexts; practice should be blocked.
• C. Open skills require no cognitive engagement.
• D. Open skills are always simpler than closed skills.

Answer: (B)

Open skills are performed in unpredictable, changing environments where factors like opponents, pace, and conditions can shift at any moment, so performers must read the situation and adapt their decisions and movements on the fly. Because of this, practice should mirror those real-world demands by introducing variability: practicing with different opponents, under varying constraints, at different speeds, and with changing goals. This helps build flexible decision-making and adaptable motor control that transfer to actual performance. In contrast, blocked practice—repeating the same drill in a stable, unchanging context—fits closed skills, where the environment is predictable and the same response can be repeated with little adjustment. So the statement that open skills occur in stable contexts and should be blocked—that idea—does not fit open skill characteristics, which rely on variability and cognitive engagement under changing conditions.