Amplifying mistakes, theory into practice & more
It's time for the skill acquisition content to get you thinking over the weekend
This week at a sconce
Research Insight: Using Repetition without Repetition in practice
Podcast Snip: What is Representative Learning Design and why is it important?
Quote: “Coaching is a complex task…”
Resource: Putting theory into practice
Tweet: Amplifying Mistakes
Research Insight
Movement Skill Acquisition for American Football—Using “Repetition without Repetition” to Enhance Movement Skill-Shawn Myzska
Repetition without Repetition
Repetition without repetition is more than likely a concept you may have heard of before. It originates from the work of Nikolai Bernstein where he states “Practice, when properly undertaken, does not consist in repeating the means of solution of a motor problem time after time, but in the process of solving this problem again and again by techniques which we changed and perfected from repetition to repetition.” In other words, we are not trying to use the same technique to solve the problem rather we need to adapt our movements to the everchanging problems.
Applying this concept in practice is really important for coaches. It means we really need to embrace variability in our practices. Shawn Myzska (aka Movement Miyagi) did an excellent job giving some practical tips for coaches to incorporate these repetition without repetition in practice.
To design activities using rep w/o rep
Coaches can change
The dimensions of the playing area.
The field conditions that the athletes are playing in.
Starting conditions or movement strategy of the athlete.
The opponents behaviours or numbers of opponents they are facing
I’m going to link my research review of this paper below if you’d like to take a deeper dive into the topic.
https://www.mrtenniscoach.com/2022/09/movement-skill-acquisition-for-american.html
Podcast Snip
Representative Learning Design
Ian Renshaw Episode 76 - Talking Performance
Whenever Ian Renshaw is on a podcast it instantly becomes a must listen episode. In this little snip he does a great job giving a nice simple introduction to the concept of Representative Learning Design (RLD). RLD is “where you you sample the performance environment, and you look at what the key features of that performant's environment are, and you build it into your training, you build it into your practice”. The two big things to include in tennis are the ball and your opponent(s) for it to be representative. Then designing activities becomes finding a suitable task difficulty for the players while preserving the key information (reduce without impoverishing).
The concept of RLD is one of the most important concepts for coaches to understand and implement in practice “because if you don't, they will do it in a different way. They’ll solve it in a different way, because, again, it's where your opponent is, drives you the way that you do it”. If the task is not representative they will solve problems that are different to what they’ll face in the game so we’ll more than likely see less transfer in these tasks.
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https://share.snipd.com/snip/61b612e1-eb5e-490e-96b1-ba9639210fb2
Quote
“Coaching is a complex task that requires understanding of how skill is developed, the science behind physical preparation and superb understanding of the psychology of people”-The Constraints Collective
I really liked this quote as I thought it captures the different aspects of coaching really nicely. The quote highlights the complexities of coaching and how it requires an understanding skill development, physical preparation, and psychology. The majority of the time the content that I share is around skill acquisition and this is only one aspect albeit important aspect of coaching. I’ve been putting a lot of focus on working on the other aspects of coaching recently too and it’s been really complementing
This is a brilliant article to check out
Resource
Applying Skill Acquisition in Basketball-Francesco Nani
Understanding how to apply the theory of skill acquisition into practice is so important. I think it’s so important for coaches to see how these ideas could look during a session. While this is important understanding the ‘why’ behind is crucial and when coaches give examples coupled with the why it’s fantastic. Francesco gives a lot of detail behind the rationale and examples of different ways in which they could manipulate the constraints. I think that the more coaches that start doing threads like this the better. Make sure to check him out and give the page a follow.
Tweet
Amplifying Mistakes-Steve Magness
‘Amplifying mistakes’ may seem counter productive but it’s an extremely useful tool for coaches to use if a player keeps making the same mistake. We are trying to make that behaviour even less useful so they need to start using different ways to solve the problem. One of the quotes from the thread that really stood out what was “(Errors) amplify our attention and awareness, alerting us that something is strange, that there’s a problem. This, in turn, puts us in exploration mode, where we look for a better solution” and this is exactly why this can be effective in our sessions.
Another things that stood out from the thread was “research has found that students learn better when a teacher or tutor doesn’t immediately jump in to provide an answer, but instead lets them struggle with it”. This fits in really nicely with the concept of designing pleasantly frustrating problems for players to solve and not giving them the solutions