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. This rule was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers (2008).
More recent research suggests such a rule isn’t a rule at all. Quantity is not necessarily the way to develop quality. It turns out that expertise is far more a matter of the way one practices than it is the amount of time you devote to practice. This re-thinking has given rise to the idea of “deliberate practice.”
The research discussed in this paper is consistent with this newer understanding of the pursuit of expertise. In it these researchers compare the practice experiences of elite and sub-elite British rugby league players. While there may be a rough equivalence of practice hours in these two player categories, what is interesting is the discovery that the practice environments do in fact differ and may in fact make a difference.
Takeaways
- To get the idea of this paper, think of the difference between two teachers, both with 20 years’ experience. One of the teachers has taught one year 20 times; the other has taught 20 different years. Is there not a likely qualitative difference between their teaching expertise?
- The way in which athletes practice over the years does appear to make a difference.
- Much of the practice histories in talent development environments depend on conventional coach-developed practices. They are: linear, technique-focused, structured, and drill and conditioning based.
- These researchers were curious if there is a performance difference between elite and sub-elite British rugby players based on their practice histories.
- This study compared such practice histories of eight players of both categories.
- What the researchers were guessing was that the elite internationals would be more likely to have experienced an ecological dynamics approach to their practices.
- This approach exposes players to task and environmental constraints which in turn exposes players to exploratory learning experiences.
- The results of the study affirmed that the sub-elites most often referred to narrow and limited affordances, restricted development and decision-making experiences, and preoccupation with drills, plays, and conditioning.
- The elites reported rich landscapes of affordances, more playful practices, and more athlete-centered learning and autonomous learning opportunities.
- Deliberate play naturally arises from deliberate practices which are context specific, dynamic, and continuously at-play themselves.
The Research
Talent development environments
In the pursuit of excellence most athletes will at some point find themselves in a talent development environment (TDE). In the UK for example, TDEs are an essential component of many team sports in the academy system. But most of these TDEs depend on using traditional teaching and coaching methods. Such direct instruction of athletes is mostly heavy on linear, technique-focused coaching styles. The practices are highly structured. They rely on rehearsing optimal and efficient movement templates. They are largely based on task decomposition and drill-based practices. They therefore are criticized for being over-systematized. The example these researchers give is from the Rugby Football League Level 2 Coaching Manual, 2014: When learning the “6 O’clock pass” performers are required to: (i) point the ball to 6 O’clock and (ii) pass over the front foot.
The newer perspective is usually called an ecological dynamics approach to practice. Basically, sports teams and athletes are complex processes and are said to emerge at the level of performer-environment relationships. This means that when the players are deliberately exposed to key task and environmental constraints, exploratory behaviors are promoted. By way of seizing affordances (opportunities for action) athletes are thereby able to better regulate and organize adaptable behaviors consistent with expert performance.
Since it has been shown again and again that practice philosophy influences practice task design, these researchers decided to study how practice philosophy has influenced practice programs thought to lead to expertise development. The sport of British rugby football league was thought to be an especially suitable research opportunity for two reasons: 1) the sparse research literature on British football player developmental activities; and 2) that this sport is dominated by a linear coaching approach promoting developing optimal movement templates.
Methods
So, here’s what they did. They used the qualitative research method of semi-structured interviews. This approach has been tested over time to help uncover the nature and significance of how individuals learn and come to know the social world they live in.
Sixteen past or present professional British rugby league players were interviewed. Eight of the players were domestic level, and the other eight were domestic level players who had gone on to represent their countries internationally. The domestic-only were called sub-elite; international players were categorized as elite. The domestic level players played a total of 1664 domestic games; the internationals played a total of 3062 domestic games.
The semi-structured interviews were approximately 40 minutes long and focused primarily on the players’ retrospection of practice experiences. While the reader may suspect the interviews were conducted in a local pub, in fact each interview was conducted in appropriate settings, and carefully designed to be consistent, trustworthy, and rigorous. The interviews were tape recorded, transcribed, and verified to be accurate by the individual players.
Results and discussion
Basically, these researchers compared the practice histories of the two groups of players with the intention to draw out implications for practice design. The thematic analysis of the interviews highlighted a total of 32 lower order themes, 13 higher order themes, and four dimensions. The four dimensions were: affordances, environmental constraint: social, early diversification, and dynamic learning environments.
Affordances
Translated, affordances are opportunities for action. Within the dimension of affordances, two higher order themes were identified across both player groups: narrow landscape of affordances (limited opportunities), and rich landscape of affordances (increased opportunities). The more we know about how to create a resourceful—affordance-rich—practice environment, the more likely players will respond to available affordances.
The narrow landscape represents by far the more common approach to designing practices and was identified by the sub-elite players. For example, player interviews pointed to coach-designed drills, or sub-phases of play in the absence of opposition players. Such practices were thought by the players to be counterproductive to player development. One player said this: “It was more drills for drills sake type of thing, going up and hitting a pad like nothing that’s really going to prepare you for rugby I don’t think.”
By comparison, coach led small-sided games create enhanced affordances where players can prospectively control their actions and behavior. Without players forced to face the actions of defenders in front and behind them, they are doing something for the sake of doing something—which is to say doing nothing.
The international players’ practices experiences included scenario-based practice tasks. These scenarios were usually coach-inserted situations, regarding for example, pitch orientation, or teammate or opposition modifications. Accordingly, this suggests coaches should go beyond small-sided games and on to inserting likely or unlikely scenarios better fit to coaching sports like rugby or football which are dynamic, unpredictable, and fast paced.
Environmental constraints: social
Both the sub-elite and elite players reported positive and supportive practice experiences, but only the sub-elite (domestic) players reported negative experiences. What contributed to these negative experiences was limited positive development and decision-making opportunities during practice. The elites, on the other hand, reported more playful experiences, more fun, and not feeling pressure either in practice or competition. Teammates were “good blokes.”
In other words, sport is social, and positive socializing makes sport largely a positive experience. Taking the player as whole person includes tending to psycho-social needs, motivation, even personal identity. On the negative side, sub-elites reported physical conditioning trumping tactical and skill development. One player didn’t see the exclusive preoccupation with conditioning helping his developmental progression. “We’d train 4 to 5 nights a week.” Monday would be light weights and injury rehab. Tuesday, conditioning. Wednesday weights and speed work. Thursday game specifics, mostly running through your plays. Friday a half-hour team run. “I wouldn’t say it improved me as a player.”
Early diversification
Both sub-elites and elites did engage in multi-sports, especially in invasion games, striking and fielding games, and net and wall games. Researchers call this habit early diversification. They also report playing other sports, such as lacrosse, taekwondo, athletics, and football. Both groups reported these opportunities to be creative and unstructured outlets that were possibly responsible for shaping their style of professional play.
Dynamic learning environments
The international elites reported they were immersed in dynamic learning environments. Such environments referred to two higher order themes: athlete-centered learning and autonomous learning. These learning modalities require co-adapting to task and environmental constraints. Which means, these ways of learning provide players with chances to nurture the idea of deliberate play as it naturally arises from deliberate practice.
Conclusion
It is uncommon in sport psychosocial research to study the microstructures of elite athletes’ practice histories. It is enough, so it is thought, to figure up the number of hours devoted to the sport commitment; then to correlate the hours with the probable level of accomplishment.
But these researchers dug a bit deeper by learning more about the quality of practice tasks in comparing pre-academy elite and sub-elite British rugby league practice histories. They learned that ecological dynamics provides a suitable framework to guide coaches in the design of practice environments. It turns out that these environments should consider the physical, psychological, emotional, and social dimensions of expertise acquisition.
Their evidence is finding significant differences between the experienced practiced quality of domestic sub-elite and elite athletes. The domestic players more easily identified negative development experiences they concerned detrimental to their motivational and performance behaviors. On the other hand, the international players were quick to identify in their histories scenario-based practices and dynamic learning environments. They pointed to a rich landscape of affordances and an adaptive functional relationship with the performance environment.
