Part practice can beneficial for cognitive learners, the skill can be broken down into sub-routines, which means there is a reduced chance of information overload. An example of part practice is in swimming, the swimmer can hold a float to neutralise the arms and focus on perfecting the leg stroke. It allows the performer to focus on a part of a skill they may be struggling with, so it is most useful for low-organisational skills. However, part practice doesn’t develop a kinaesthesis for the movement and doesn’t work on the skill as a whole.
Therefore progressive part practice might be more useful to performers. Progressive part practice still breaks the skill down into sub-routines, but the sub-routines are brought together. This makes progressive part practice more useful for complex and serial skills. This kind of practice can be useful for younger learners, who will have shorter attention spans and also benefits associative performers, as it helps with the transfer of sub-routines into the full skills and develops a kinaesthesis at the end of the progressive part practice which finished practising the whole skill.
Varied and distributed practice are also useful techniques for learners with short attention spans. Varied practice has a number of benefits. It can improve both selective attention and skill detection of warning signals. An example of a varied practice approach to learning to shoot a basketball might involve a sequence of ten mid-range jump shots, followed by ten lay-ups, followed by ten free-throws, followed by ten three-pointers, with the entire cycle repeating ten times. It leads to faster more efficient information processing and is used best for open skills.
However, if a performer is only struggling in one area of the varied cycle, then this method may not be beneficial. Distributed practice is more suited to continuous skills and as well as being useful for learners with short attention spans, it is also useful when motivation is low, as the performer has breaks for mental preparation. For a sport like cycling it can also be useful, as there is a reduced chance of injury through fatigue, the more tired the cyclist is, the more likely he is to fall off the bike and sustain an injury.
Opposite to distributed practice is massed practice. This is usually done in a short session and has no breaks in it. Because of the physical demands, the performer should be fit, highly motivated and have the ability to master the skill as a whole. An example of this would be a triple jumper who would spend a session performing the triple jump over and over again. This should only be used for autonomous learners as it is practising a learned skill.