Fish tanks, learning from fortnite & more
Here's some Skill Acquisition content for you to explore over the weekend. I hope you enjoy it!
This week at a sconce:
Tweet: The one place adults can’t interfere, control or critique
Research Insight: Learning from Video Game Design
This weeks newsletter is going of format a little bit as I take a bit more of a dive into the research paper and try to give some more practical examples and even a scenario for you to think about at the end.
Tweet
The one place adults can’t interfere, control or critique
https://x.com/stevemagness/status/1892559150158163984
This tweet really got me thinking about how we need to improve the sporting environments for our young learners to keep them engaged in sport as long as possible. This led me to taking a bit more of a deep dive back into the paper below.
Research Insight
“Learning by Design”: What Sports Coaches can Learn from Video Game Designs
The inspiration for writing this piece came from seeing the tweet above on Twitter. I remembered this fantastic paper and went back to look for some inspiration from it. If kids are retreating from sports to video games, how can we use some of the principles of video games in our sports coaching to try make sport a more enjoyable experience for them.
This paper explores how video game design principles can help coaches create better learning environments for athletes. It encourages coaches to act as learning designers, shaping practices that promote exploration, adaptability, and problem-solving. The authors highlight 13 key principles from video games—things like gradual challenge, player autonomy, and learning through action—and show how they apply to sport. Each principle is backed up with practical coaching examples across different sports. Here’s an image with the 13 principles that the paper explores.
For the purpose of this newsletter we are going to explore 5 of they principles and how they can be applied to coaching. In the paper they give some really nice examples of all of the principles in practice if you’d like to explore them further. Let’s dive in
1)Co-Design: Co-design involves giving athletes a say in shaping their practice, helping them take ownership of their learning. It starts with small but meaningful choices rather than full control.
Example in Practice: In tennis, players can choose the type of ball they’d like to use for an activity, allowing them to adjust the challenge to their skill level.
2)Identity: When athletes connect their learning to a meaningful identity—whether it's being a leader, a creative player, or a defensive specialist—they become more engaged and motivated.
Example in Practice: A rugby team defines their attacking identity as “fast and fearless,” encouraging players to actively look for quick, risky attacking options during the task.
3)Pleasantly Frustrating: Learning happens best when tasks are challenging but achievable—pushing athletes just beyond their comfort zone without overwhelming them.
Example in Practice: A basketball player struggling with free throws starts closer to the basket. Each time they make 7 or more out of 10 in that position, they take a step back until they reach the free throw line
4)Fish Tanks: Fish tanks are simplified practice environments where key elements of a skill are preserved, but unnecessary complexity is removed. This helps athletes focus on important interactions without being overwhelmed.
Example in Practice: In soccer, a 2v1 counter-attacking activity can help players learn decision-making by creating a ‘slice’ of the game where they experience the different elements in a simplified environment
5)Skills as strategies: Skills should always be practiced in context—meaning athletes learn when, where, and why to use them, rather than just repeating movements in isolation.
Example in Practice: Instead of dribbling around cones, soccer players practice dribbling in small-sided games where they must evade real defenders, reinforcing when and how to use the skill effectively.
Combining the principles
While these are all individual principles, the real magic happens when you combine some of them together in the practice tasks. Here are a few ways coaches can combine these principles to create richer learning environments:
✅ Co-Design + Pleasantly Frustrating : A basketball player struggling with free throws starts closer to the hoop and moves back after making 7/10 shots. To co-design, they help set their own challenge level, deciding when to increase difficulty while staying in that pleasantly frustrating zone.
✅ Pleasantly Frustrating + Skills as Strategies: Helping a striker struggling with finishing under pressure by starting with a scenario where both the goalkeeper and defender start slightly out of position. Then gradually make the task more challenging by reducing the advantage they have. This keeps the task challenging but achievable (Pleasantly Frustrating) while reinforcing when and how to finish in realistic situations (Skills as Strategies).
Here’s the link to the full paper
“Learning by Design”: What Sports Coaches can Learn from Video Game Designs
Reference for paper
Robertson, S., & Woods, C. T. (2021). “Learning by Design”: What Sports Coaches can Learn from Video Game Designs. Sports Medicine-Open, 7(1), 1-8.
Putting this into practice yourself
Here’s the scenario:
Description: You’re working with a group of players who struggle with making decisions in attacking situations. When approaching the goal, they either rush their shot, delay too long, or fail to recognise passing opportunities. This could be in any invasion sport so pick one that suits you
Coach Prompts:
How can you simplify the attacking scenario while keeping key decision-making elements?
How can players be involved in co-design to increase engagement?
What adjustments can you make to keep the challenge level optimal (pleasantly frustrating)?
How can you ensure players are developing finishing skills in a game-relevant way (skills as strategies)?
If you get a chance, I’d love to hear some of the solutions you come up with in the comments section by clicking the button below
Good read (as per usual)! I really like the Identity angle because I think that is a great way to increase engagement, tap into co-design, and make things pleasantly frustrating by removing some of the personal aspect of failures.
I am thinking about basketball and how you could create 2 v 1 or 3 v 2 transition situations. Perhaps you involve athletes to create set "identities" for the ball handler on the offensive side - scorer, playmaker, etc. Or you could let players experiment with favorite professionals (e.g., be Luka or Kelsey Plum). If you go the pro route, it might be fun to include what each of those pros "has in their bag" so to speak. Prior to a rep, the offensive group could huddle american football style to decide who would have the ball and what identity they were going to take for this attempt. They would lock in that choice. The defensive players could also huddle and come up with their plan. Maybe they also have identities for how their team approaches transition defense (e.g., stop the 3, force a long shot, etc.). After each rep, perhaps you could have the offense and defense huddle back up to try to guess what the other side was trying to achieve in the previous effort. If they locked in choices on a small white board, you could do the reveal game show style even. You could figure out a way to assign points based on the actual scores/stops and ability to correctly assess what the other side was trying to achieve. Similar to the previous comment, you could create different challenge levels by adjusting the terms (1v1, 2v1, 3v2), making it a live start vs a set start, adding/subtracting number of identities in the mix, etc.
This is obviously half-baked (at best), but I am hoping you can see where I am going. On the one hand, it takes away some live decision-making (or at least turns it from a free for all to a check down sort of scenario), but also may help athletes better attune to the key information. I think it would also be interesting for players to see how they may be able to still succeed against a defense that has "guessed correctly" because they are paying attention to the cues that allow them to adjust if need be.
Thanks for sharing the video game comparison. Coach like a video game creator!
For basketball:
1. Put the defense in a more disadvantage situation, further from the basket, so the offense has more time to make a better decision on whether to keep attacking, score, or pass. Or, tell the defenders they must play with their hands behind their back.
2. Co-Design: The players get to decide where on the court they want to start the activity. They decide what score they want to play to.
3. Gradually give the offense less and less of an advantage to start the activity. Even give a dribble limit or shot clock.
4. There will always be defender trying to stop them which will force them to find different solutions that are game like.