the effect of general and specific practice on the presence of special motor skill in basketball free throw

this study examined the effect of general and specific practice on the presence of a special skill. 24 healthy university students with no history of basketball were selected. after a pretest, they performed constant and variable practice (in constant and variable groups) for 5 weeks and 3 sessions per week. a performance test was conducted at the end of every week and retention and transfer tests were conducted after 2 days of detraining. the anova test with repeated measures was used to analyze data. the results showed that the constant practice was better during performance in practice sessions and the variable practice was better in transfer of the mentioned skill. also, no differences were observed in basketball throw from the penalty location between constant and variable practice groups in retention test. this finding did not support the hypothesis of special skill in basketball throw skill. therefore, the coaches and players are recommended to use variable practice for more learning of basketball throw skill.