Designing from distance: Reconsidering practice design for team sports

Firstly, I hope this blog post finds you, your family and friends in good health; this is strange times and new territory for us all and I hope we can follow the advice of health professionals and leaders of our countries to “flatten the curve” and keep our communities safe and well, including all our athletes, coaches and administrators involved in our respective sports. I wanted to look at and discuss a few articles I’ve shared earlier this year, this time addressing ideas around practice design, athlete-led learning and how techniques such as game-based ideas both engage and encourage players in team based sports.

Fellow coach and friend Nick Hill has previously written regarding the ideas around and impact of Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) within team sports context (https://www.coach-logic.com/blog/coaching-styles-teaching-games-understanding-part-1/). As quoted, David Bunker and Rod Thorpe said “(the) observation of present games teaching shows at best, a series of highly structured lessons leaning heavily on the teaching of techniques, or at worst lessons which rely on the children themselves to sustain interest in the game. Traditional methods have tended to concentrate on specific motor responses (techniques) and have failed to take account of the contextual nature of games”.

“An approach to teaching games which is based on the premise that if we can help children to ‘understand’ games and to reduce the importance attached to the teaching of techniques in strictly controlled situations then the joy and satisfaction of games will be open to children of all abilities.
By playing purposeful games, athletes enjoy training and their intrinsic motivation is increased which in turn enhances their desire to learn and encourages them to continue participating in sport
TGfU enables players to learn about the game and practise the technique within the context of a game rather than separate from it. Learning in context provides a better understanding of the game as well as many opportunities for decision making, a skill that is consistently considered desirable for athletes”

Following on from this, the awesome coaches at HelpMeCoach.ie also shared a piece of writing (https://www.helpmecoach.ie/articles/games-based-coaching-101) asking Games based coaching, What is it, How does it work and Should you be doing it? They too identified Games based coaching as the philosophy of using a variety of games to teach something as opposed to drills, by which games are designed to teach the athlete the same concept as they play in an actual (competition) situation. They also identified the benefits including more engaging for players to take part in which in turn improves psychological focus, teaches players to be more adaptable and makes better decision makers and more realistic to what occurs during games which provides the opportunity to learn/perform skills in a more realistic situation.

They talk especially around scenarios based ideas, which if done well and follow certain frameworks, could also be recognised as Constraint Led Approach. This is where we as coaches can apply individual, task or environment constraints to create affordances or specific, applicable actions and learning opportunities. However, to do so effectively, we have to understand our players, their current capabilities and desired outcomes for learning and development within their sporting context. Soccer coach educator and AIK youth team coach, Mark O’Sullivan, when writing around Constraints Led Approach not just being a Game Based methodology, identified “a key limitation for adoption of game centred approaches is the biographies of coaches and coach educators who have developed abilities shaped by the landscape of traditional coaching practices and coach education programmes”. This point again reiterates a point I have continually made during this difficult period; as we take time to socially distance, following the health professional’s guidelines, we should reflect and build our interpersonal skills to allow us to take time in future to better know and understand our athletes and gain a holistic view of involved players.

While I am concluding my research research at University of Queensland, I have been fortunate to be part of sport coaching specific symposiums over the past couple of years which have also looked around these ideas. Towards the end of 2018, Mark’s fellow AIK coach James Vaughan came and discussed areas around form of life or cultural influences and the importance of this within coaching context and the importance of creative, playful atmospheres for youth engagement and development. One of the points discussed was looking at the fine balance between form of life or cultural environment versus constraint led practices implemented by coaches. Especially at FC Barcelona, he observed and discussed the use of skilful manipulation of sociocultural constraints, where the form of life or environmental conditions surrounding the club could both constrain or afford creative moments, akin to Rietveld & Kiversten’s research (2014). I believe this again shows the socially dynamic role of the coaches; both acknowledging the pull of form of life surrounding strong club and locality cultures while adopting game based or constraint led learning approach to set goals and reward actions for the behaviour you want to see from your players. However, as discussed, it is perceived as important that the coaches are mindful and present for their adopted coaching methodologies and adopt the form of life offered from the coaching scenarios offered as opposed ignoring the sociocultural embeddedness and forcing your ideologies on the group.

Looking at the importance of creative, playful atmospheres for youth engagement and development, we talked further around the adopted practices of FC Barcelona’s youth sides. James showed and supported the focus on “how to play” and performance outcomes were presented in game based activities or other forms of non-linear pedagogy. It was discussed amongst the group that skill adaptability and attunement IS creativity in action; the focus was more around allowing the form of life or cultural influences to be an expression of how the teams played and developed. Therefore, trying to balance external influences from coaches towards player development and answering individual’s basic needs theory to answer their intrinsic motivation and strivings. Essentially, explained previously by many researchers and practitioners, game based approaches is not solely throwing a ball into the middle & playing matches or competitive scenarios; it is recognising the backgrounds of the players plus the needs of the group or individuals and structuring practice where athletes are required to be creative, adaptive and make decisions which shall transfer into competitive environments.

Slightly earlier in 2018, Ken Martel, technical director of USA Hockey’s American Development Model which works on coaching education and player development projects in the organisation’s youth hockey department, came and offered insight into how his game based practices have increased and retained age grade hockey players. One of the points made by Martel was “competition structure always dictates the development structure”; therefore, following his research, USA Hockey incorporated age-appropriate principles within the adopted ADM which included equipment that is correctly sized to fit the child and a playing surface that is sized age appropriately to fit the child, ideas that are echoed by Dr Ian Renshaw, when talking about Constraint Led Learning. This idea is supported in other sports such as football where Belgium FA Coaching Education Director Kris Van Der Haegen made changes, to age grade football which they call “Dribbling Soccer” for 5-7-year-olds. They play short games and constantly changing opponents, fitting the needs of young children learning to dribble, not wanting or needing to pass, and scoring lots of goals. They play small-sided games until U14, similar to Spain and many other countries. Martel also quoted:

“Games as a significant portion of the practice environment which include activity-based games, Skill-based games and Game situational role-based games which encourage peer teaching opportunities and autonomy in playing practices”

Developing expert status requires interest and motivation within sport to increase along with proficiency of skills, which is inline with USA Hockey’s mantra of “play, love and excel” meaning you must love the sport prior to mastering. This mirrors the qualities perceived crucial for elite youth participation which include confidence, appropriate attentional focus, game sense and mental toughness (Holland, Woodcock, Cumming, & Duda, 2010). Dr Ed Coughlan from Cork Institute of Technology is also quoted as saying “Coaching through games provides context and enables the emergence of realistic, unpredictable situations to unfold in front of the players, to be figured out on-the-fly....for the many acceptable ways to coach a skill-based, team sport, one thing is for sure, drills are not the answer. Drills deceive us into thinking we are in control. Yet for the coach prepared to move away from a place of control and move into a space of variability, unpredictability, discovery, decision-making, problem-solving – all things that drills do not give us – the rewards are there for all to be experienced.”

Ultimately, if you’re selecting a game based approach or constraint led approach, the focus shall be in enhancing the quality of practice in developmental or elite sport (Chow et al, 2016). The linear forms of drill based, unidirectional transfer of information from coaches is becoming less sought after by modern day athletes as they look to question, explore and self evaluate their skills and competency more frequently, something that coaches should be encouraging to gain creative, resilient athletes. Therefore, having dynamic games and frameworks such as CLP, which are applicable or relative to their prominent sport shall allow coaches to act, assess and react to athletes, their needs and abilities to transfer.

As we’re in the midst of a difficult time for social, team sports, we should use this time to look at how we’re coaching and creating our practice design, addressing how we’re creating connection and impact with the players and how we as coaches are creating opportunities for the players or athletes to drive learning and development. I believe we as coaches should assist players to identify problems as opposed to solving them, offering ideas and assistance for how to think and act as opposed to offering solutions. This allows coaches to act as mentors, supporting players to develop meta cognitive skills where the athletes are aware of and take responsibility of appropriate practices and thinking strategies. This idea of learning being a series of episodes where players identify and build knowledge is termed scaffolding; the coach’s role within assisting players or athletes to work within Zone of proximal development. These methods, and the ideas such as CLP and Games Based Approaches mentioned, positions coaches as mentors and have athletes sitting at the centre of the environment, where coaches shift from knowledge expert for athlete as in early stages of development to learning manager or facilitator (Carnell and Lodge, 2002), offering considerate yet constructive feedback for the player to investigate further.

Sports coaches of athletes act as pedagogues and adopt comprehensive and holistic roles in the moral development of their athletes through their adopted and shared practices, languages and beliefs. If coaches are to develop knowledgeable, engaged athletes, capable of performing learned tasks when under pressure and not under direct instructions, I believe this shall require bidirectional transfer of knowledge or total ownership by athletes of their development, with support from the coaches as “more capable other”. Again, understand people, personalities and environments shall change; no one would have imagined or expected the pandemic we find ourselves in currently…therefore, use this time reflect and review your coaching methodologies. Asking questions and understanding the answers and whom they’re coming from will give you a snapshot for today yet this needs to be continually addressed and worked on. Be willing to change ideas or structures to match what your athletes or players need today and be reflective and flexible to change to what they need tomorrow or when we see them next.