• Personality
• Heredity
• Confidence
• Prior experience
• Ability

Personality

• Disposition and behavior of an individual developed through life experiences and interactions.
• Athletes with positive attributes (determination, motivation, enthusiasm) are often quick learners and more receptive towards new ideas, approaches and feedback.
• Athletes with positive personality traits tend to be more cooperative in creating a productive learning environment.

Heredity

• Genetic characteristics inherited by an individual biologically.
• Sometimes puts limits to the span an individual can reach in terms of acquiring a skill and often influence the potential for being successful in a sport or acquiring a skill.
• Some factors include:
  • Ratio of fast/slow twitch muscle.
  • Somatotype (body type/shape)
  • Height
  • Conceptual ability

Confidence

• A sense of belief in oneself on their ability and potential to perform a task.
• Influenced by personality traits and surroundings.
• Both lack and over confidence affects performance.
• Coaches should encourage training in gradual steps to build up confidence starting from the basics. A sudden rush of complex information out of the range of a learner might make them feel overwhelmed.

Prior Experience

• Not whole but some level of knowledge about a particular strategy common across skills.
• Major aspects involved in prior experience are: motor skills, strategies and techniques, fitness routines.
• Helps in speeding up the learning process as acquaintances with some aspect of the skill in the past can be helpful in reproducing common actions (for example, hand-eye coordination is common in both cricket and baseball).

Ability

• Way of learning, processing and implementing a new skill.
• The degree varies from person to person.
• Ability incorporates the following factors:
  • Perception
  • Kinaesthetic
  • Tactics
  • Preciseness