Ase Strandbu, Kari Stefansen, Ingrid Smette, and Morten Rensio Sandvik The Big Idea “Involved parenthood” in organized youth sports is what these Norwegian researchers are attempting to better understand. Child-centered parenting they note—using the United States as an example—is still evolving since its early cultural development in the 1960s. Organized youth sport in those days was in its infancy, preceding the appearance of involved parents. On a personal note, this reviewer—who is from the U.S.—recalls his early childhood sporting days in the 1960s, and happily…
Latest Research
Stay up-to-date with key player development research. Our resident Professor, William A. Harper, breaks down research papers into simple, easy-to-read articles with takeaways for coaches.
J. Bartholomew, N. Ntoumanis, and C. Ntoumanis The Big Idea Let’s begin this research review with an illustration. In sports, there is a difference between players who are merely involved and players who are fully committed. (You will have to play along here.) There is an old American illustration pointing out this difference, the difference between being involved and being committed. Think of a ham and eggs breakfast. You will notice a real difference between the contributions of the two barn animals. The chicken is…
Frenkie De Jong is one of Dutch Football’s brightest stars. PDP Lead Researcher James Vaughan examines a recent interview with De Jong and shares some brilliant research around knowledge and learning, helping coaches understand how to create a learning environment and difference between telling and doing. In a recent interview, one of the most exciting prospects to emerge in European football talks about the secret of becoming a good football player. Ajax’s Dutch international Frenkie de Jong explains: “Good players play on intuition. When I…
Balague, C. Torrents, R. Hristovski, K. Davids, and D. Araujo The Big Idea Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) was a legendary Canadian poet, singer-songwriter, and novelist. The following lyrics are from his 1992 album The Future and the song “Anthem”: Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in. Let’s assume there is a crack in our conventional understanding of practicing, training for, and playing competitive sports. Not a break. Just…
Paul S. Glazier The Big Idea It’s GUT check time! We are all familiar with this cliché in sports performance: tests of gameness, courage, fortitude, stick-to-itiveness. But less familiar is another meaning of GUT. Beginning roughly in the late 1970s particle physicists began looking at the possibilities for the otherwise distinct three of the four forces in nature at high energy to merge into an indistinct single force. They called this model a Grand Unified Theory, or GUT for short. Over the years, this general…
Christina Salmivalli The Big Idea This review paper was published in the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior. Its subject is bullying. While its context is the classroom, what is reported in the research entails the fields of play as well. If there is an umbrella quote covering the inherent nastiness of bullying, it would be this, Maya Angelou’s reflection: “I’ve learned that people forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” What amplifies…
VAR technology has already had a monumental impact on football at the highest level, including the World Cup Final. PDP Technical Advisor, Dan Wright examines the impact of VAR, the potential risks and some of the subsequent trends emerging in the beautiful game. Since its inception football has had many innovations that have shaped the way we play and view the modern game. These changes have come in various forms. There have been large fundamental changes such as the introduction of offsides, the use…
Blandine Bril The Big Idea In shorthand, this paper is both WEIRD and weird. In longhand, it is about the impact of cultural constraints on motor habits. In a sentence: It is weird that the scientific community regularly assumes that Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) peoples are solely representative of humankind. This paper by Blandine Bril was published in Kinesiology Review in 2018. Bril’s question is a simple one: Are there “motor styles” common to members of a given cultural group? Her answer…
The 2018 World Cup displayed football and team cultures from around the world. In this article, Dr. John Alder of the English Institute of Sport follows up his article from Issue 17 of PDP Magazine with an insightful examination of the importance of ‘thinking culturally’. Note: John contributed to this article in his personal capacity. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of either the English Institute of Sport or UK Sport. As a custodian of a team’s culture,…
Ludvig J. T. Rasmussen, Lars D. Ostergaard, and Vlad Glaveanu The Big Idea Few sport coaches would deny player creativity as an essential component of a winning game performance. Nor would they deny that facilitating in-game creativity is typically a significant component of practice sessions. In other words, when creativity is valued it is understood to be an end to be achieved; and it is measured by serendipitous or improvisational performance. But in this research paper published in the journal, Sport, Education and Society (2017),…
High performance sport is dominated by a common narrative around winning, elitism and competition. Co-founder of myfastestmile & top coach developer, Mark Upton shares an excellent article on how this narrative reflects culture, and what the alternatives are. “As a team we are committed to taking our game to the next level through hard work and continuous improvement, (we) will continue to drive our elite standards and core values to ensure we are ruthless and competitive in every aspect of our preparation and performance.” The…
C. Ryan Dunn, Travis Dorsch, Michael Q. King, and Kevin Rothlisberger The Big Idea The estimates in the United States vary. But anywhere between 24 and 44 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 participate in organized youth sports. The measurement discrepancy is due to the wide-ranging framing of the demographics, geographies, and organizational structures. Let’s just say there is a glut of kids at play in the U.S. today, organizationally speaking. On the one hand, there is good reason for this popular…
The Big Idea A good example of Yiddish wit is the old parable, “Man plans, God laughs.” By now this adage has not only achieved bumper sticker status, but the American hip hop group Public Enemy used it as the title of their 13th studio album (released July 16, 2015). For our purposes then, it isn’t a stretch to connect this bit of wisdom to the world of sports. After all, planning is at the root of most all preparation and performance in sport. Is…
A Constraints Led Approach is a coaching methodology that Player Development Project actively promotes. Top PDP contributor, PE Teacher and blogger, Sporticus shares his excellent reflections from a coach education event in late 2017 in Sheffield, England attended by researchers and thought leaders in coaching. Over half term I had the pleasure to attend a seminar on Research and Practice Design in Elite and Development Team Games Programmes at Sheffield Hallam University. The three presenters Vanda Correria, Mark O’Sullivan and Danny Newcombe shared their current research and practice which…
Keith Davids, Duarte Araújo, Luis Vilar, Ian Renshaw & Ross Pinder The Big Idea When asked to comment on what he found to be so special in playing the classical guitar, Andres Segovia spoke of his sitting position in playing it. He said he leans his body forward slightly to support the guitar against his chest, “for the poetry of the music should resound in our heart.” So why shouldn’t the poetry of the sports player resound in his or her heart? Which is what…
Martyn Rothwell, Joseph A. Stone, Keith Davids, and Craig Wright The Big Idea In the pursuit of producing “expert” sports men and women, there is a myth worth exploring. It is common to take for granted that the number of years or hours of practice are predictive of becoming expert. For example, there is something called the 10,000-hour rule. The psychologist K. Anders Ericsson studied how people become experts in their field. He concluded that 10,000 hours of practice was a reasonable rule of thumb. …
Christine S. Nash, John Sproule, and Peter Horton The Big Idea Albert Einstein was said to have said this about the nature of research: “If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn’t be called ‘research,’ would it?” And so, it goes. Researchers try to figure out creative ways to answer the questions they ask themselves, knowing all along they have no idea what they are doing. Not knowing in advance provides the go-juice to power the research process. Sometimes it is best…
Luca Oppici; Derek Panchuk; Fabio R. Serpiello; and Damian Farrow The Big Idea If this study does nothing else, it should reinforce a couple of useful ideas hovering over our sporting life. First, there is inherent relevance for the power of field research to inform our sports practices. Second, we are learning that our sporting practices, where possible, need to be as game-specific as we can make them. This study is field-based in both its design and technical sophistication; it is not simulation, but fact-based…