Improving decision making, being coachable & more
Here's some Skill Acquisition content for you to explore over the weekend. I hope you enjoy it!
This week at a sconce
Research Insight: Decision Making in Rugby Union
Podcast Snip: Autonomy and Meaning for Coaches
Quote: The Easiest way to improve decision making
Resource: Being coachable
Tweet: CLA & NBA Players
Research Insight
Manipulating Constraints to Train Decision Making in Rugby Union
This paper is an oldie but a goldie. It’s from 2008, but it’s one of the best papers I’ve read in a while. I loved the insights into training decision making in this paper. My favourite pieces were around viewing the the game as complex systems and the fact the every interaction between players is unique due to the dynamic constraints that are interacting in that moment.
Here are my 5 Key Insights from the paper for coaches:
1)The aim of constraints manipulation in training is to enhance players' attunement to the perceptual variables essential for successful task performance.
Why it's important: By manipulating constraints, coaches can create practice environments that help athletes become more sensitive (attune to) the critical perceptual information (or affordances) needed for successful performance.
2)Competitive team games require players to continuously adapt to changing environments, making adaptability a crucial skill for success.
Why it's important: Adaptability allows players to effectively adapt to the dynamic nature of team sports, where conditions and situations change rapidly. To develop the skill, it’s important that our practice tasks are dynamic (or alive) and help players develop this skill
3) Instead of aiming for optimal movement patterns, practice should focus on helping players find functional, context-dependent solutions.
Why it's important: Emphasising functional solutions over ideal movement patterns encourages players to develop the ability to solve problems in a variety of ways depending on the nature of the problem they are facing
4)Decision-making skills of players are best enhanced under practice task constraints that balance variability and stability, providing structure while allowing adaptation to situational demands.
Why it's important: A balance between stability and variably is important. Utilising things like principles of play or a shared intention can provide some stability as they act as a constraints. The players can still adapt their behaviour to suit the dynamic problems they are facing
5)An opponent’s movements in team games are significant task constraints that shape each player’s decision-making behaviour.
Why it's important: Recognising the opponents as dynamic constraints has huge implications for task design. If opponents are going to shape the way that we solve problems then it’s going to be crucial that we have opponents present as much as possible in our practice tasks
As always, I’ll attach my detailed notes on the paper. I’d highly recommend checking them out this week because there was so much good information that I couldn't fit in here
Reference
Passos, P., Araújo, D., Davids, K., & Shuttleworth, R. (2008). Manipulating constraints to train decision making in rugby union. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 3(1), 125-140.
Podcast Snip:
Autonomy and Meaning for Coaches
Rob and Jia Yia Chow (One of the authors of Non-Linear Pedagogy) book are discussing how an understanding of the of the principles of NLP can provide more ‘autonomy and meaning’ for coaches. This is because it will allow you to understand why practice activities work. This allows you to design your own activities and go beyond just copying others.
I tweeted or x’ed, whatever you'd say at the moment about the benefits of understanding Non-Linear Pedagogy during the week. I'll share a link below to this below because it includes a nice summary of the key principles you can check out.
Quote
“The easiest way to enhance decision-making is through playing more games within training. When players have limited opportunities to make decisions during training, then they have limited opportunities to improve”-Dr Phil Kearney
This is a quote from a brilliant article written by Dr Phil Kearney around developing decision making and I thought it tied in nicely with this week's newsletter that has a decision making focus.
I would possibly add one small caveat to the quote and add in ‘representative games’. This would ensure that the key information that the players need to learn to ‘attune’ to is present in these games which will further enhance their decision making skills.
Resource:
What is coachable?
Coachability is often associated with a top-down approach where players are expected to follow the coach's instructions.
However, coachability should be seen as the capability of learning. This was a really nice way of looking at it that Nick went through in the video
To foster this coach ability it's important to provide autonomy and opportunities for decision-making for players. This creates an environment that fosters better learning and player development.
Tweet
Using the CLA with NBA Players
There were some fantastic insights into applying the CLA, with high level players in this clip- After experiencing a challenging and engaging workout that includes adversity, players often become hooked and see the tangible benefits being one. I would say from my experience of utilising the CLA with lower level players they do start to really enjoy the challenge of solving problems and intuitively.
https://x.com/transformbball/status/1813281107959255272?t=BTsSVPHCabT6W_JqYer3PA&s=19