Self-organisation was a key process discussed at the Complex Systems in Sports Congress at Camp Nou in Barcelona. PDP co-founder James Vaughan discusses the importance of understanding and observing self-organisation with video and reflections from Barcelona and Sweden. It was the end of the day and that meant free play. However, this freedom felt very restricted, very one-directional, very narrow. It was almost as if the players had blinkers on; constrained to only see forwards. Dribble forward, tackle, loose ball, transition! Dribble forward, tackle, loose ball, transition! Dribble…
complex systems
In this Masterclass Webinar replay, the PDP team host Skill Acquisition and Coach Development expert, Ric Shuttleworth for a wide ranging discussion. Ric has worked at both the Australian Institute of Sport and with England Rugby as well as other top sporting organisations. Player Development’s Project’s coaching team of Dave Wright and Dan Wright sit down to tackle a number of topics with Ric, including: This is a fascinating and thought provoking conversation with a world leader in the area of skill acquisition. Bring your…
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: This philosophical discussion will hopefully leave you considering…
In this article, UEFA A licensed coach David Garcia shares his thoughts on the benefits of chaos and failure within coaching environments. “You’ve got to live at the edge of your capabilities. You’ve got to live where you’re almost certain you’re going to fail. That’s the reason for practice. Practice is controlled failure.” – Will Smith Indeed, practice is controlled failure. It should be a realistic preparation of the game. It’s preparation where your players will fail, but will learn how to grow from that…
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…
Pedro Passos, Duarte Araújo, Keith Davids The Big Idea Since these investigators brought it up in their abstract’s first sentence, let’s briefly talk about ant colonies as a bridge to the subject of self-organization in field-invasion team sports. Imagine this. There is a flood threatening a colony of ants. What do they do? No problem or panic: they simply build an ant raft. These pancake-like rafts are composed of the ants themselves—sometimes as many as 100,000—who instinctively connect themselves perpendicular to each other—always heads up—and…
Rushiella Songca, University of South Africa The Big Idea Consistent with our effort to review worldly research publications for our PDP coaches, this paper on transdisciplinarity training was published in the International Journal of African Renaissance Studies. Professor Songca isn’t writing explicitly for our PDP readers, but there is a way of seeing the paper as though he were. Remarkably, the kind of transdisciplinarity training described in this appeal is consistent with a line of thinking in coaching education and development that values collaboration, dialogue, and interaction…
Margaret J. Wheatley The Big Idea Margaret (Meg) Wheatley has been an organizational development speaker and international consultant since 1973. In this keynote conference address published in the Occupational Development Practitioner, she chides us for so willingly continuing to use 17th Century images of the universe in the 21st Century world. For centuries, she argues, “we have been planning, predicting and analyzing the world . . . holding on to an intense belief of cause and effect and we’ve let numbers rule our lives.” Her major concern is…
Joseph Baker and Sean Horton The Big Idea Whether human development is a product of nature or nurture is one of the longest and most colourful debates in the history of ideas. More common today however is the growing belief that we evolve by way of the intertwining of both our biological and environmental influences. This review paper explores the impact of these interactions on human performance, and in particular, on acquiring and demonstrating sport expertise. The inherent complexity of interacting influences in the pursuit of sport expertise is…