The big return, changing rules & more
Here's some Skill Acquisition content for you to explore over the weekend. I hope you enjoy it!
The newsletter is finally back and it’s going to go back to being a weekly publication again. During the last school year I was extremely busy, but with the summer holidays upon us I’m getting back into the habit of writing about Skill Acquisition and coaching. I’m also working on a few resources for coaches- the first of which is going to be released soon. This is a free CLA Podcast guide for coaches that I’ve spent a lot of time putting together. That’s enough of me rambling on so here’s the newsletter, hope you enjoy
This week at a sconce
Research Insight: Facilitating Exploration
Podcast Snip: Action Capabilities and Intentions
Quote: Learning to make good decisions
Article/Thread: Constraining to Afford
Tweet: Real life Affordances
Research Insight
Applying the Constraints-Led Approach to Facilitate Exploratory Learning of the Volleyball Serve
This was a fantastic article that explored utilising the CLA in coaching the serve in Volleyball. Exploration is essential for mastering motor skills, yet certain game rules can hinder this process. In volleyball, for instance, the rule allowing only one serve attempt may prevent players from experimenting due to fear of losing points. This study investigated whether introducing a second serve in volleyball can motivate players to use their first serve to explore and expand their action capabilities. They found that the addition of a second serve did in fact promote more exploration during the study.
Now here are my 5 Key Insights from the paper
1. Exploration as an Active Learning Process . Exploration is an ongoing and dynamic process where individuals try different methods to see what works and what doesn't. This involves a lot of trial and error.
Why it's important: Encouraging players to explore fosters creativity and adaptability. By trying out different techniques, they can find what best suits their unique style and strengths, ultimately leading to more skillful and resilient athletes.
2. Highlighting Specifying Information for Enhanced Perception-Action Coupling. Searching is the process of honing in on specific information to support the development of functional relationships between perception and action.
Why it's important: By highlighting certain specifying information , coaches can help athletes improve their decision-making and skill execution during games. This refined perception-action coupling is crucial for developing players who can respond effectively to dynamic game situations.
3. Manipulating Constraints to Overcome Rate Limiters . A key aspect of coaching within a Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) is manipulating constraints in the practice environment to minimise the hindering effect of rate limiters on exploration.
Why it's important: By manipulating constraints, coaches can help athletes overcome barriers such as fear of failure or anxiety. This enables a more productive exploration of skills, leading to better performance and more enjoyment in learning
4. Impact of Game Rules on Exploration . Game rules, such as having only one chance to serve in volleyball, can hinder exploration because players might be afraid to make a mistake and lose a point.
Why it's important: Understanding how rules impact player behavior allows coaches to create practice environments that encourage risk-taking and experimentation. This is vital for helping players develop a wide range of movement solutions and problem solving skills.
5. The Role of Affordances and Skill in Performance. Even when an opportunity (affordance) is present, the performer needs to have the required skills and the intention to use that opportunity.
Why it's important: Coaches must ensure that players not only recognize opportunities but also possess the necessary skills to act on them. This highlights the importance of comprehensive skill development and fostering a mindset geared towards taking advantage of opportunities as they arise
As always, here’s the link to my more detailed notes 👇
Reference for paper
Moy, B., Renshaw, I., & Gorman, A. D. (2024). Applying the constraints-led approach to facilitate exploratory learning of the volleyball serve. Journal of Sports Sciences, 1-8.
Podcast Snip
Aligning Intentions With Action Capabilities
There's some brilliant insights into coaching in this snip of Ian Renshaw on the Talent Equation Podcast. It would be a very familiar sight for any PE Teacher reading this seeing students ‘freeze’ up and just start taking short swings at the shuttle while doing badminton in PE. What's happening here is that their intention is to get the shuttle back without missing it so they don't look silly in front of their peers. It would be common here to try give teach them out of this freezing which can work in some occasions
However, the key to success here is aligning your intentions with their action capabilities. If our intention is for them to ‘unfreeze’ and explore a full overhead smash we must design our task to match their action capabilities. To do this we'd scale or simplify the task so that the task would match their action capabilities. For example, you could use balloons for a little while which would simplify the task. This would ‘unfreeze’ them and allow them to explore hitting a full smash.
This doesn’t just apply to teaching badminton, it applies to all sports. If the player’s are struggling to perform a skill, it’s crucial to try understand what the rate limiter is-just like with the volleyball example
Quote
“The fact is that kids learn to make food decisions by making decisions, not by following directions”-Alfie Kohn
I really loved this quote that I saw recently which was shared by Jorg van der Breggen. It fits nicely with the exploration element of the research article I discussed above. If we want our players to become better decision makers we need to give them plenty of opportunities to make decisions in practice. Yes there will be mistakes, but these are an important part of the learning process. There are sometimes where we can't give them full license to explore due to things like safety issues.
A nice way to think about it is the players are on a ‘tight rope of development’ that they need to cross themselves. It is our job to support them to get across safely but ultimately it's their own journey. If they need more support we want to provide them with a ‘handrail’ to get across rather than ‘handcuffing’ them to the tight rope and stopping their journey.
Hat Tips
Tight rope of development-Dr Naomi Fischer
Providing them handrails not handcuffs- Dr Olly Logan
https://x.com/JvanderB78/status/1796189438726275185?t=g6zieyCtZ0sgvX5cBjgBpg&s=19
Article/Thread
Constraining to Afford
Kevin has shared some brilliant tweets recently around representative design and practice design principles in general. In this particular tweet Kevin was discussing the really important principles of ‘constraining to afford’ which also is an important part of exploration fitting in with this week's theme. This particular piece of his tweet really stood out for me
“If we want to change behaviours or skilled action within a team it is far better if they find how to get to these desired behaviours themselves.It’s most likely they want to as well. It is likely they understand on some level what they want to do. So we guide them with design”
https://x.com/movementcoachkm/status/1803356616168710519?t=C6zmPj5wGDgD5DJ9CCQ46A&s=19
Tweet
Real Life Affordances
In the brilliant book Dynamics of Skill Acquisition, affordances are described as action possibilities that invite behaviors from individuals.They are individual and time-specific, relying on one's past experiences, learning, and growth to impact performance.
Affordances are not just something that are present in sport but are found everywhere in our daily lives. Withagen and colleagues described the environment as being ‘a rich landscape of affordance’, some of which are inviting and some which are less inviting to the perceiver. In this scenario, cycling across the grass rather than dismounting off the bike was a stronger affordance for the cyclists. But thin about how the ‘affordance’ could change depending on changes at that specific time. Imagine that there was heavy rain and the grass became flooded, suddenly that affordance is gone, or that the grass is extremely mucky and the person doesn’t want to get their clothes dirty before work. This is why affordance are both individual and time specific.