Coaches around the world are having to innovate with their session design as football training kicks off in some nations after the global pandemic. In this article, PDP Coaching Advisor, James Coutts shares some practical ideas for sessions that allow for social distancing. Like many coaches preparing to get back onto the grass I started designing my sessions for the various groups I’d be working with as football resumes with a whole new remit – social distancing. Most sessions I’d implemented prior to the Covid-19…
task constraints
Natalia Balague, Rafel Pol, Carlota Torrents, Angel Ric, and Robert Hristovski The Big Idea This is an opinion paper. The opinions herein revolve around how the components of complex systems self-organize. In particular, the authors propose a more streamlined approach to what is called the constraints-led approach to understanding restrictions to the degrees of freedom in complex systems. The uptick in the popularity of the study of constraints as a unifying framework is proving to be useful in understanding the learning/training process in the complex…
PDP Video Session Plans are adaptable sessions designed by academy coach, Dave Wright. All sessions show key focus points, set up, and progressions so you can use them in your next practice.
In this video and article, PDP Lead Researcher, James Vaughan shares a 3 v 3 + 1 practice from a session with AIK players in Sweden. The video and session plan outlines how manipulating simple task constraints can allow players to solve problems, collaborate, make decisions and work on a variety of moments in the game. Have a look at the video above, it aims to demonstrate how session design, rules and constraints can educate attention and intention, towards skilled intentionality. ‘Skilled intentionality is…
Game-based learning has enormous benefits in terms of decision-making and skill acquisition. PE Teacher, blogger and regular PDP contributor, Sporticus shares his fantastic article on the advantages of manipulating games and the environment and how coaches can adjust conditions in order to help young players improve their skills. At the heart of a games based approach to teaching is the challenge to the centrality of learning isolated and decontextualised techniques that will ‘allow’ the child to play. Instead of starting with the practice…
What are affordances? PDP contributor and associate lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, Ben Franks shares his work on affordances, what the term means and examples to bring the concept to life. Affordance is a new ‘in vogue’ term, and appears to be replacing the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) as the modern evolving coaching methodology. Similarly to the nature of a CLA, affordances exist – they are properties of the environment that are ‘real’, emerging and decaying naturally. By definition, an affordance is the key origin…