Unit 3: Factors Affecting Performance

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on momentum and impulse. Momentum as mass times velocity, impulse as force times time, the impulse momentum relationship, and how follow through generates speed while bending joints on landing reduces force for safety.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on major muscles and joint actions. The main muscles of the upper and lower body, the joint actions they produce such as flexion, extension and rotation, and the roles of agonist, antagonist, synergist and fixator in a coordinated movement.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on fitness components and testing. The health related and skill related components of fitness, matching tests to components, the meaning of validity and reliability, and how protocols and pre-test conditions are controlled to give trustworthy results.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on oxygen uptake. The oxygen deficit at the start of exercise, the steady state during submaximal work, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption during recovery, the role of VO2 max, and how to read an oxygen uptake graph.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on skill classification. The open and closed, gross and fine, discrete continuous and serial, and self paced and externally paced continua, why skills sit on a continuum rather than in fixed categories, and how classification informs the way a skill is taught and practised.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on the aerobic energy system. How carbohydrate and fat are fully broken down with oxygen to resupply large amounts of ATP, the slow rate but very high yield, the duration over two minutes, the non-fatiguing by-products, and the endurance sports that depend on it.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on the anaerobic glycolytic system. How glucose is broken down without oxygen to resupply ATP, the fast rate and moderate yield, the duration of roughly ten seconds to two minutes, the production of lactic acid and hydrogen ions, and the sports that rely on it.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on the ATP-PC energy system. How creatine phosphate rapidly resupplies ATP without oxygen, the very fast rate but small yield, the duration of around ten seconds, the lack of fatiguing by-products, and the maximal sports that rely on it.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on fluid mechanics. Drag forces and how athletes reduce them, lift forces, the Magnus effect that swings and dips spinning balls, and how streamlining, body position and surface design are used to improve performance in air and water.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on the principles of training. Specificity, progressive overload, the FITT variables, reversibility, individuality, variety, diminishing returns and maintenance, and how each principle is applied when designing a training program for a chosen athlete.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on training methods and adaptations. Continuous, interval, fartlek, resistance, flexibility and circuit training, what each develops, and the chronic cardiovascular, respiratory and muscular adaptations that aerobic and anaerobic training produce over time.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on feedback. Intrinsic and augmented (extrinsic) feedback, knowledge of results and knowledge of performance, positive and negative feedback, their functions of motivating and correcting, and how feedback type and frequency are matched to the stage of learning.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on practice methods. Whole and part practice, massed and distributed practice, and fixed and varied practice, what each suits, and how a coach selects a practice type based on the skill classification and the stage of the learner.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on transfer of learning. Positive, negative and zero transfer, proactive and retroactive transfer, bilateral transfer, and how coaches structure practice to maximise positive transfer to the game and minimise the interference of negative transfer.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on fatigue. The main causes including phosphocreatine depletion, hydrogen ion accumulation and increased acidity, glycogen depletion, dehydration and rising temperature, and how the dominant cause depends on the intensity and duration of the effort.

Motor learning. Fitts and Posner stages of learning, skill classification, practice types and distribution, and the role and timing of feedback.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on force summation. How using more body parts in the correct proximal to distal sequence and with correct timing adds the velocity of each segment, and how this is applied to maximal throwing, kicking and striking skills.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on the sliding filament theory. How an impulse releases calcium, exposes binding sites on actin, lets myosin cross bridges pull the thin filaments inward, and how ATP powers the cross bridge cycle and relaxation.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on the structure of the motor neuron and skeletal muscle fibre. The dendrites, cell body, axon and motor end plate, plus the sarcolemma, sarcoplasm, myofibrils and sarcomere, and how each part carries a signal toward contraction.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on stability and balance. The centre of gravity, line of gravity and base of support, the four main factors that change stability, and how athletes lower stability deliberately to start fast or raise it to resist being moved.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on energy system interplay. How all three systems contribute at once, how intensity and duration set the predominant system, the oxygen deficit and steady state, and how to analyse the changing energy contribution across a game or event.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on lever systems. The fulcrum, effort and load, how to classify first, second and third class levers in the body, mechanical advantage and disadvantage, and how the third class levers of the limbs trade force for speed and range.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on the stages of learning. The Fitts and Posner cognitive, associative and autonomous stages, the characteristics of the learner at each stage, the type of feedback and practice that suits each, and how a coach adjusts their approach as a learner progresses.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on types of muscle contraction. Isotonic concentric and eccentric contractions, isometric contractions and isokinetic contractions, what each one does to muscle length and tension, and clear sporting examples of when each occurs.

Exercise physiology. The ATP-PC, anaerobic glycolytic and aerobic energy systems, their interplay, training principles and the adaptations they cause.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on projectile motion. The three factors of release angle, release speed and release height, the independence of horizontal and vertical components, the parabolic flight path, and why the optimal angle drops below 45 degrees when release height exceeds landing height.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on muscle fibre types. The characteristics of slow twitch type I and fast twitch type IIa and IIx fibres, their speed, force, fatigue resistance and energy supply, and how fibre composition suits endurance or power athletes.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on diet and nutrition. The roles of carbohydrate, fat and protein, the importance of hydration and the effects of dehydration, and the timing of intake before, during and after exercise including carbohydrate loading and post-exercise refuelling.

Functional anatomy. Major muscles and joint actions, agonist and antagonist pairs, types of contraction, and the three lever classes applied to sport.

WACE Year 12 Physical Education Studies Unit 3 content on Newton's laws of motion. The law of inertia, the law of acceleration linking force, mass and acceleration, and the law of action and reaction, each applied in detail to named sporting examples such as sprinting from blocks.

Biomechanics. Newton's three laws, force summation, momentum and impulse, stability and balance, and projectile motion applied to sport.