Pam Richards, Dave Collins & Duncan R.D. Mascarenhas
The Big Idea
The USA National Football League Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning once said this about high pressure situations: “Pressure is something you feel when you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.” The subject matter of this research paper aims to help coaches help athletes learn how to be pressured and know what the hell they’re doing.
Takeaways
- Making quick and good decisions—collectively and individually—under pressure in team invasion sports is often the difference-maker in any competitive experience.
- One way to create a framework for improving pressured decision making in the context of an athletic performance is to integrate slow, deliberate reflective thinking in practice and training.
- In the sport of international elite netball play, this study used a five-stage framework (adapted from field hockey) to slowly build effective team decision making from off-court practice to on-court play.
- The slow-to-quick evolution of reflection habits helped facilitate coaches and players alike to first reflect “on-action” which facilitated team-wide “reflection-for-action and eventually team play “in-action.”
- In short, by way of slowly integrating reflective habits as a coaching strategy, team members in play were found to make quick decisions under pressure pre-reflectively (before taking time to think about the decision).
- Where possible, it is clear from this study that integrating top-down (coach) and bottom-up (player) philosophy and strategies improves the player sense of ownership of the team (the buy-in).
- Shared ownership also may improve individual player identities and team cohesion.
- The shared engagement in building strategies to bring baseline vision to applied principles in action can reduce isolation of the coach.
- With the goal of an entire team playing pre-reflectively and no longer needing to make decisions helter-skelter, an integrated team of autonomous players could reduce or even help prevent decision breakdowns under pressure in action
- With a slow process of reflectively generating a shared vision of how to cope with high pressure decision-making, it is indeed possible in an invasion game to develop creative players who will know how to be pressured and know what in the hell they are doing.
The Research
All coaches either know or quickly learn that the difference in winning or losing between relatively evenly matched opponents comes down to the little things done either well or badly. If a coach can consistently help individuals, the entire team, and even the coach respond in positive ways when under pressure in a performance or a contest, the chances of team success improves markedly.
Based on previous literature on decision-making in sport, these authors explore integrating various “slow-time” teaching strategies to drive positive changes in “high-speed-high-pressure” competition. It was hypothesized that by empowering players through the reflective process, the rapid-fire decisions would improve in dynamic, pressured situations.
Netball is an invasion game. In this study the authors use elite athletes playing championship level netball to illustrate a way of training not just technical and tactical aspects of playing, but a way to creatively integrate decision making skills as well. Sometimes this ability to make decisions quickly and accurately is the mark of an athlete who can “think” the game in the sense of having a high sporting IQ. While some athletes seem to be just gifted in this respect—to have the disposition to cognitively grasp the big idea of the sport they play—these researchers argue that a training environment can be created that in fact uses situational teaching where an entire team can elevate their grasp of making good decisions under pressure.
When elite athletes are compared to novices, research shows that the elites consistently use different sources of information than the novices do. While this seems to be the case when athletes are taken individually, what is less clear is whether an entire team can behave the way some individuals do when it comes to cogent decision making. So how can we develop this habit across an entire team?
These researchers use a cyclical decision making model beginning with a variety of what they call “slow time” approaches to empower players individually and collectively to “reflect on action,” which in turn assists the entire team and their coaches to “reflect-for-action” and ultimately “in-action.” What is especially unique in their approach is the way the athletes themselves are directly engaged in the reflective decisions about improving pre-reflective decision-making in their sport.
Netball is a sport demanding quick decisions: the court is small; the player with the ball cannot move with it; and a player must pass the ball within three seconds of receiving it. In this study a five-stage training process is introduced. The primary author of the study had been working with an elite netball team with international players in preparation for the 2013 world cup. The goal was to create a team of autonomous thinking players who take responsibility for their individual actions but who position their decisions and actions in a team context. The approach was to create reflective practices. The netball action this study focused on was the crucially important attacking center pass. This study involved a one week residential holding camp, followed by a two week intermission, then followed by departure for overseas tour.
Stage 1: Developing a coach’s situational framework
This first step was to develop the coach’s vision of developing excellence in the attacking center pass. This pass is the key opening pass of netball, and if done consistently well sets up the team’s scoring opportunities. As a team improves on its grasp of knowing what to do and knowing when and how to do it, the goal is to know what a perfect center pass would look like. So for starters, and before the athletes are asked to critique it, the coach creates his or her mental model of the perfect attacking center pass. This is like having a baseline to work from. The version was taught in small groups, using a booklet, dissecting all player positions, and so on. Both declarative (the “what”) and procedural (“the how”) was analyzed. The discussion of the whole/parts vision was shared by all.
Stage 2: Developing a team decision-making framework
Integrating this shared mental model of the perfect pass created a common language for the slow and deliberate theory sessions and small group task sessions on how to create successful center passes. The players in the small groups then reflected on the experience and reported back to the entire team. A common language was created by way of the discussions. The coach also via power point presented her view of the task, including video clips of international netball play attacking center passing. Stage 2 ended with an effort to contextualize the decision-making with an on-court practice emphasizing the shared understandings of the players and the coaches, including player roles. The team was also empowered to reshape the coach’s vision of the attacking center pass.
Stage 3: Developing an on-court decision making in players
The players then moved exclusively to the court where a series of filmed matches were held. By way of this transfer of reflecting-on action to reflecting-for action, the players studied the clips looking for the most effective center passes in the matches, including explaining why they were effective. They also were challenged to discuss the various roles of each player and where each pass should be made in differing situations. The reflections continuously improved the entire team’s grasp of the increased complexity and importance of the center pass. Team unity and identity was also strengthened largely because the team saw all the player positions and the importance of each player’s role in learning multiple possible play patterns for successful center passes. In addition, the team-wide grasp of all of the individual passing options for each player and position created confidence in picking up the speed of their individual decisions.
Stage 4: Maintaining decision making
There was a two week break between the one week holding camp and the beginning of international play. Stages 1-3 were reviewed. Additional workbooks and videos were created, one for defenders and another for attackers. Testing-type questions were included on the various phases of the positioning for best practice. Continued refinement of options and strategies were reviewed with player feedback included in further refinements. Training games were then played.
Stage 5: Application and transfer to the world stage
The increased level of thinking apparent in stage 4 did have positive impact on the gradual increased percentage of passes-to-shot from the first to the last training games against a junior national squad training games. In the four international matches, the coaches replicated the stages of reflection after each of the four matches. The reflection on-action led to the reflection in-action both of which led to the reflection for-action in the performances. The team, unit, and individual players were analyzed. The match statistical analysis of passes penetrating the attacking circle continued to rise from 55% in the first test game to 87% in the fourth and final international match. The world-class center pass to completion (to scoring) increased from 23%in the holding camp to 56% in the final international match. The player production of improved decision-making under pressure was obvious. So too were the coach performances by encouraging revision from her “alpha” vision to a “beta” vision imprinted with the player suggestions and modifications.
