What is leadership? Mark Upton, Co-creator of myfastestmile and world class coach developer discusses leadership in sport, some of the traditional perspectives of what leadership is and the importance of empathy and collaboration. “They are after strong leadership…someone to come in with a clear plan” A snippet from a recent conversation where we discussed a national sports body looking to fill a senior position in the organisation. It drew me back to a moment in time a couple of years ago where my conversational partner […]
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Creativity values, culture, systems and control. What does it all mean and how does it impact coaching and sporting environments? In this Masterclass Discussion, PDP Editor, Dave Wright hosts Co-Founder of my fastest mile, Mark Upton alongside PDP Lead Researcher and AIK Academy Coach, James Vaughan. In this wide-ranging conversation, the guys discuss some of James’ Phd research and his recently published paper on creativity, as well as diving down a number of rabbit holes such as: Challenging the role of traditional sports science The […]
In this Live Webinar replay, Mark Upton joins us to discuss the non-linear journey of player development, constraints based coaching, skill acquisition and more. Mark is co-founder of myfastestmile and is one of the UK’s top coach education researchers. Mark will join the PDP Team, regular hosts Dave Wright & Jimmy Vaughan for an engaging discussion about topics from both Mark & Jimmy’s research. We break the conversation down into a number of key topics around non-linear pedagogy and athlete development. This is a must watch for […]
Re-imagine the way you think about player development with Mark Upton and Al Smith. Two of the sports world’s leading minds share their player development frameworks and principles, informed by a unique blend of cutting-edge research and nearly 30 years experience in sporting environments. In this Live Webinar replay, Al and Mark about the key factors affecting player development environments, and how to get the best out of your athletes. Mark and Al have recently teamed up as co-creators of myfastestmile.com – a social enterprise […]
Mark Upton, Co-founder of myfastestmile continues his discussion on learning dynamics. Mark outlines the challenges and benefits that come with the concept of self-organising and understanding what you can & can’t control in coaching. “When I explain complexity theory to my old Mum, she looks at me quizzically and says, ‘Isn’t that common sense, dear?’” In a recent post on Learning Dynamics I covered how patterns of behaviour emerge due to interactions between people in a system (or at a different scale of analysis, […]
How does a teacher or coach transition to a learner-centric view where you can allow the learner to explore and develop within the environment? Co-founder of Myfastestmile, Mark Upton reflects on how coaches can facilitate this process. The image below appeared on my twitter timeline a couple of times today… It prompted retrieval of one of my favourite passages on teaching/learning… “Teaching is, in some ways, a myth. The greatest skill is learned, more than it is taught. And the great teacher realizes […]
Co-founder of Myfastestmile & regular PDP contributor, Mark Upton discusses learning dynamics and the challenges of making change within any existing system citing examples from performance sport. I was recently asked for a reflection on my experiences in performance sport. After some pondering what came to mind was how learning (for all involved, not just players) needs to be a constant given that there will never be a blueprint/recipe/formula that can be settled upon with any permanency. Over time this becomes easier said than done, […]
Coming from a position of influence in young players’ lives, we continually aim to create ‘perfect’ environments for development. Mark Upton co-founder of myfastestmile, explains the organic learning curve that occurs without our involvement, and often beats all of our over-engineered solutions. I believe things get more interesting in player learning and development when we take a much broader view and consider it over longer periods of time and factor in the experiences young people have in their daily lives, inclusive of (but certainly not restricted to) coach-led practice […]
What influence does sporting governance have on player development and the athlete environment? Mark Upton, founder of myfastestmile, discusses how governing and funding bodies are PART of a complex social system – not THE system Previous fragments – #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9 In one of the links in fragment #9 it was intimated that innovation in football academies could be hampered by rigid regulations imposed from the governing body of that sport. This is not a sport-specific phenomena…Peter Gray (2014) talks of the same issue in education and the challenges of […]
[…] emergence of collective behaviours and football interactions. After the session, I selected some clips in an attempt to highlight key moments. Then I asked for some feedback from key people. One of those people is leading practitioner in skill acquisition, ecological dynamics and learning, Mark Upton. Mark provided feedback on the first video (without the voiceover) giving his first impression of the session’s purpose without knowing the rules or constraints. Simply by observing the design and the players movements. Check out the first video without any voiceover (or […]
Skill acquisition specialist, Mark Upton, helps us navigate the complex mix of variables that every young player experiences throughout their development. The way in which each player perceives these events can lead to very different results – some will be stifled by the experience, while others will go on to become the future superstars of our game. In the backyard of an Australian home, a young boy tries to chip a football over a small pond and into his mini- goal on the other side. […]
[…] Players will experience ups and downs, success and failure. Without these bumps in the road, we won’t develop players. Some will deal with those challenges, others will struggle, but as coaches we have to try and help all of our players. In Mark Upton’s article, ‘The Perfect Storm‘ in Issue 5 of PDP Magazine, he said “Taking a constraints-led approach to skill development helps us appreciate the complex mix of variables that can affect the development of skill. In his book ‘Outliers’, Malcolm Gladwell demonstrated that […]
[…] to see the same results in your context. Your players will self-organise in relation to the unique context (and form of life) they are in. I’m not advocating these particular constraints as best practice, just showing that they worked in this context. As Mark Upton says: ‘Local perturbations to the system create global change.’ The perturbations, or system probes, in this case are the rules and constraints, but one of the key factors of change was time. Players and teams were given time to figure things […]
[…] the benefit of interviewing many coaches and researchers for Player Development Project. Alongside my own experience, Player Development Project has developed a holistic model of how we see the process of development (see below). Credit must go to contributors such as John Alder, Mark Upton, Lara Mossman, Ruben Jongkind, Mark O’Sullivan, Al Smith, Steve Lawrence, Nick Levett and our own team members, James Vaughan and Dan Wright as well as many of the interviewees we have spoken to over time. For more detail on the model, […]
Expert researcher and PDP contributor, Mark Upton of myfastestmile discusses the 7 principles of non linear pedagogy. Mark examines how to create an ideal environment for players to focus on task mastery using a constraints approach. How do players best learn to select & control their actions to meet the demands of a dynamic environment as found in football/rugby/hockey/basketball/netball etc? To help answer this question, below are my interpretations of the key principles from Chow’s (2013) notion of a Nonlinear Pedagogy. Considered through the lens of 15 […]
[…] exercise often used in training counselors is to ask them who their favourite teacher was and why? “They believed in me” is the most common answer I’ve come across. Affirmation is a direct way of showing someone that you believe in them. Mark Upton wrote a gem of an article on the difference between teaching and learning just recently on this website. I wonder whether praise is more associated with teaching, and affirming with learning? If that’s correct it points to the likelihood that praise […]
[…] every yearly cohort of girls and boys. I also believe that its goes against the goals of both the sports movement and the community in general”. Summary “Assessment of talent at a single or narrow point in time is a flawed approach”- Mark Upton Many current methods of focusing on early indicators of talent are very static and linear approaches. They ignore the fact that development is individual and that differences in performance can be explained by differences in maturation. Coaches that judge early talent […]
[…] coaches, why do we still see this mechanistic worldview where authority figures (are perceived to) have all the answers and are in complete control of outcomes? “We mistakenly see anything that doesn’t fit our linear mechanistic worldview as in need of fixing” as Mark Upton eloquently explains and we strongly recommend reading more on Learning Dynamics from his blog Myfastestmile. This ‘mechanistic worldview’ can deceive us from our natural complexity as humans, mammals and complex systems. The Science Continues “…Better reserved for the machinelike behaviours of […]