Which type of practice trains a skill in isolation and strengthens the motor program, good for closed/discrete skills?

• A. Distributed
• B. Massed
• C. Fixed
• D. Mental

Answer: (C)

Fixed practice focuses on training a single skill in a stable setting by repeating the exact movement pattern until it becomes automatic. This repetition helps embed and refine the motor program—the sequence of neural commands that control the movement—so the action can be produced smoothly with little conscious effort.

This approach is especially effective for closed and discrete skills because the environment is predictable and the action has a clear start and end. When you practice the same pattern over and over, you gain consistency, accuracy, and speed, building a strong, reliable motor pattern that can be recalled quickly when the skill is performed in performance.

Mental practice, by contrast, involves rehearsal without movement, which strengthens mental representations but not the actual motor commands. Fixed practice is about isolating and honing one movement, whereas other methods (like varying practice conditions or pacing of trials) address adaptability or timing rather than the isolation and automation of a single skill.