Bruno Travassos, Ricardo Duarte, Luís Vilar, Keith Davids & Duarte Araújo
This study reinforces the practical results of recent research demonstrating that there is good sense in designing training sessions that correspond as much as possible to skills and tactics necessary for competitive game performances. This study focusses on the conditions we create when we train, and how that relates to the performance on game-day.
In the sport of futsal, for example, this study demonstrates that creating more complicated passing options in practice increases the likelihood that such practice can be correlated to making successful passes in competition.
Takeaways
- This study reinforces the practical results of recent research demonstrating that there is good sense in creating team sport practice and training regimens that correspond as much as possible to skills and tactics found in competitive performances.
- In the sport of futsal, for example, this study demonstrates that creating more complicated passing options in practice increases the likelihood that such practice is more faithful to demands of making successful passes in competition.
- In a sense, and odd as it sounds, this study implies that by doing worse in practice the players were more likely practicing game performance skills.
- Which in turn would eventually mean that player improvement in practice could actually transfer to playing better in competitive matches.
- After all, the point of practice is to become a better player on the field of action; the point is not to become a better practitioner of mechanical and largely non-transferable skills.
The Research
In the last decade, research into improving tactical and technical skills in team sports has focused on player constraints to this learning such as physiological capacities and bio-mechanical abilities. One result of this previous research has been to increase the enthusiasm to break up skill tasks into smaller components in training and then to reassemble them in practice, kind of a part-to-whole strategy for skill improvement. The argument is that the players will have an easier time with less complex learning and more control in the learning environment.
But the researchers in this study argue for the opposite. By intentionally limiting uncertainty when practice tasks are decomposed into smaller units, such practices actually exclude the very uncertainty that defines competitive performances. The researchers say that what traditional practice sessions fail to include are the action possibilities that real competition depends on in team invasion games: helping players perform skills with accuracy, tempo, rhythm, and flow.
There is increasing support for a non-traditional approach to practice and training athletes at whatever level of skill in team invasion sports. It is becoming clearer that improved transfer of skills in practice to competitive play requires connecting the performer and the sport environment in practices. Dribbling a soccer ball around a series of static cones, for example, is vastly different than dribbling through human traffic in the midst of a competition.
But how might we better simulate or represent the actual action skills in practice and training? These researchers decided to conduct a relatively simple study to compare data from non-traditional practice to data from performance outcomes in futsal. The idea was to see if by increasing the uncertainty (variability) in a passing task in practice they might better represent what actually happens in competitive play passing.
They invited eight senior futsal players from a Portuguese third division team to perform a non-traditional passing task in practice. The researchers knew, of course, that successful passing in team play means a performer must not only decide to whom the pass should be made; but as well to pass using the specific speed and direction to satisfy the opening (the emerging opportunity to make the pass) presented by the play environment at the time.
In this study the players were asked to pass (along the ground) regular futsal balls as a practice station. The sessions were filmed with a digital video camera. The players were positioned in the corners of a square 5m x 5m. Two balls were in play. There were four conditions. The passing directions were randomly manipulated: 1) passing to predetermined teammate in front; 2) passing predetermined to a diagonally located teammate; 3) emergent passing either in front or diagonally to a player without a ball; and 4) same as 3, but now including front, diagonal, and lateral passing. (Note: This format will become clearer if the reader will see Figure 1 in the text of the research study itself.)
The same players were also asked to play a competitive futsal match (without defenders) using ground passing in five attacking sequences that ended with a shot on goal. The series of sequences were also filmed with a digital video camera. In both situations (practice and performance) ball motion trajectories and percentage of passing accuracy were measured.
The results of the comparison of filmed practice and performance on the same skill are interesting. It turns out that by increasing the number of passing possibilities for action in practice (moving from predetermined conditions 1 and 2 to the multiple variable passing in conditions 3 and 4), passing accuracy decreased. So too did ball speed. In other words, the more complicated passing skills in conditions 3 and 4 of practice favourably compared with the decreases in accuracy and ball speed as filmed in the actual competitive performances.
The evidence from this study suggests that increasing the variable (emerging) passing of a futsal ball in practice (conditions 3 and 4) was more representative of competitive performance than predetermined passing practice (conditions 1 and 2). The implication from these results is that to achieve better transfer between practice tasks and performance demands in learning sport skills, it is just plain smart to create situations that replicate as much as possible performance environments.
