ecological dynamics

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…

PDP Lead Researcher James Vaughan poses the question to coaches: are we competing or are we collaborating? In this article, James discusses the concept of ‘water’ and its implications on an individual’s approach to coaching.   One of the most important questions you can ask as a coach is: Are we competing or are we collaborating? In fact, it’s one of the most important questions you can ask any group of people intending, attempting or pretending to work together. I’ll admit this is a strange statement…

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…

Coach and researcher, Ben Galloway shares a video about the importance of opposition in session design and of interactions between players in skill acquisition. In his video below, ‘Attuning to Others’, Ben outlines how football interactions emerge as a result of a wide range of environmental influences; most importantly, the presence of other players.   The video above is designed to provoke thought and reflection. Some viewers may disagree with the practice design approach I have discussed, while others may share this view of coaching….

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…

Constraints based learning and ecological dynamics are concepts that Player Development Project has promoted for a long time. Football coach and University tutor, Ben Galloway shares his excellent video on the topic around how the concepts can be applied in your coaching environment. The next couple of blog posts that I share via PDP will revolve around some videos that I have produced, stemming from Constraints Based Learning and Ecological Dynamics. Hopefully what these videos will provide is support to previously posted material and a…

Duarte Araújo, and Keith Davids The Big Idea The authors of this is recently published research paper (Frontiers in Psychology, September 2016) aim to demystify how individual players can better become a coherent team in sport performances.  More team coherence usually translates into more team success They do this in three steps.  They:  1) explain the ecological dynamic frameworkof their theory; 2) describe what they call the shared affordances of the individual players and of teams; and 3) reveal four necessary ecological properties of team synergies and their measurement. While understanding…

Keith Davids, Duarte Araújo, Vanda Correia, and Luis Vilar The Big Idea For this research reviewer, who is also an ex-youth soccer coach, occasionally there are uncomfortable moments arising from summarizing research papers for our PDP coaches and readers.  This is one of those moments.  You see, this paper essentially points out to modern youth football coaches the crucial differences between coaching the practice and coaching the game. We confess to this:  Our personal coaching history is testimony to the weaknesses of traditional coaching practices.  They were something…

Jonathon Headrick, Keith Davids, Ian Renshaw, Duarte Araújo, Pedro Passos, and Orlando Fernandes The Big Idea The time and path of a major storm ravaging parts of Europe can be influenced by the flapping wings of a butterfly in the Amazonian jungle (“the butterfly effect”).  So too can small changes in the sub-phases of a non-linear dynamic system of a football game have big later-consequences on the outcome of the game.  In other words, small causes may have larger, later effects. In this research paper,…

Duarte Araújo, Christina Fonseca, Keith Davids, Júlio Garganta, Anna Volossovitch, Regina Brandão, and Ruy Krebs The Big Idea Essentially, this publication is a position paper.  The topic of the paper is the development of sport expertise.  The more conventional understanding of the interactions between an individual and a specific performance environment is to seek explanations for such expertise based mostly on what is going on “inside” the player (referred to as “organismic asymmetry”).  The less conventional understanding—and the position taken in this paper—is that too…

Pedro Passos and Keith Davids The Big Idea These authors, Passos and Davids, call their paper an “opinion piece.”  Not so.  It is an intelligent discussion of ecological dynamics played out in the learning of team sports through the interactive nature of the sport performance.  Such interactions include those within the team and between the team and the opposing players.  This dynamic continuously unfolds as players from both teams interact with constraints such as rules and boundaries, attempts at coordinating attacks and defenses and counter…

What value do stories play in sport? Making sense of the sporting narrative and being able to translate and challenge these ideas in our coaching is a critical part of player development. Tradition plays a huge part in the systems with which we operate as coaches. Breaking the norm and creating a new narrative can be a catalyst for change. Joining us for this intriguing conversation will be Al Smith, Co-founder of myfastestmile on how the narratives around you can influence your coaching behaviour, performance and…