This is the first in what I hope will be a long-list of research article reviews we do in the future. My goal with this series is to convert the research into a more digestible format and to provide at least one practical application for coach and player within each review. Enjoy!
Todays review will be based upon the article "Learning to be adaptive as a distributed process across the coach–athlete system: situating the coach in the constraints-led approach”. The full citation can be found at the end of this article.
To start, I thought this quote from the article would be appropriate in describing what the article covered:
"It is neither the learner nor the coach, but, the processes shaping their interactions that should be at the heart of applying the constraints-led approach".
The constraints-led approach, in general, can be thought of as a learning process in which the coach designs the training session so that the athlete can take away maximum learning from each training session. Specifically, they do this through constraints. A constraint is something that provides an obstacle that the athlete must take into account when performing said action. Increasing the pitch velocity a hitter sees, for example, would provide a time constraint on the hitter. They would need to figure out a way to speed up their process to be successful (a hard hit ball) in that specific task. While the coach may not have told them to “swing faster” or to “reduce your time to contact”, those solutions may very well make themselves present through the adjustment of the athlete to be successful in the task they are presented with. Which, in this situation, is hitting a ball hard (again, just using as an example).
The topic of conversation in the article was not necessarily whether the constraints-led approach was good, or worked, but rather how practice design affected not only the player, but the coach and their opportunity to learn as well. They wanted to see how the dynamic of practice design, which is often set forward by the coach, affected both of their opportunities to learn.
One example of this that was addressed in the article was designing training in either “playing form” or “training form”. They found that much less verbal instruction was present during “playing form” when compared to “training form”. Essentially, playing form can be thought of as a game in which the athletes are competing and the coach is observing. Think of it like a baseball game. Coaches, generally, are going to be quieter and talk less during a game when compared to a practice (at least I hope they are). The result of this is the coach is able to observe more often and get a better understanding of how their athletes interact with a competitive environment. Training form, on the other hand, can be thought of as your typical practice session. The coach is much more present and is instructing the athlete at a much higher rate (up to 40% of the time in the study). As a result, neither athlete nor coach gets as much opportunity to interact with the environment.
The problem? Many coaches design practices like this without even realizing it. I believe the phrase “you don’t know what you don’t know” applies very well here. The challenge for many coaches is not to design a better practice. The challenge is for them to realize there is even an opportunity for a better designed practice.
The principle behind the constraints-led approach is that you can design practice like a game so that both athlete and coach are learning how they respond in a dynamic environment. But, wouldn’t that just mean the athletes play games all the time? Not so fast. Sure they might be playing games, but there is a specific reason behind why they are playing each game. The goal is to design each game in such a way that it helps illuminate the affordances the athlete can use to best solve a problem. So when I say game, I don’t literally mean a baseball game. Instead, I mean a game in practice that is designed to attack a specific problem the athlete is having/sees in competition.
Before this gets too confusing: an affordance is basically a set of solutions that are available to the athlete during any given task. Think of each interaction between player and environment as a problem. The task is what the athlete is trying to accomplish. The problem is related to the task. For instance, to hit the ball hard. Affordances are what the athlete can do to successfully solve that problem in each situation.
So... the idea behind a constraints-led approach is a better practice design that allows the athlete to dynamically solve problems, just as they do in a game, but for those problems to be created by a coach as a direct way of working on a weak area that the athlete has.
Pretty neat.
Moving forward: when thinking about the interaction of the player and coach, what are we specifically looking for? Here’s a question I took from the article that I found very interesting:
"For example, do some couplings (e.g. such as between highly skilled athletes and highly skilled coaches) support an increase in adaptability/variability"?
Earlier in the article it explained how more synergy between two systems (think about athlete and coach) requires less control from either side. In terms of getting into a flow state, and learning at a faster rate, it seems that the better the athlete and coach exist together in the environment the more learning that can occur.
Now, this isn’t exactly groundbreaking. It’s pretty obvious that the better a coach and athlete work together, the more opportunity for learning and growth there is. However, I think it is beneficial to think about how practice design affects the actual relationship of the coach and athlete. If a practice is poorly designed, the odds that the athlete and coach get in sync with each other is lowered substantially.
Practical Applications
So, from this article we know that how a practice is designed matters. We know that the better interaction a coach can have with his athlete the better. We know that this will allow for better and accelerated learning as both player and coach are open to learning and are allowed to move forward at a quicker pace. What’s that mean for you?
In the work that I do, remote training, it is vital for me to be able to communicate to my athletes without verbal instruction. I am, quite literally, not there when the athlete is practicing. Their “environment” does not include having me in it. So I must come up with very unique ways to communicate what I would like the athlete to do and to learn. There are a couple ways I have gone about doing this that I think can have a direct application to you in one way or another, whether you are a coach or a player. I will list 2 of them below:
- Education. My first goal with any new athlete is to establish what it is we are trying to do. They have had multiple coaches in the past, which means I am NOT working with a clean slate. It is vital for me to understand how they look at their skills and also for them to understand how I look at skills and development. With this in mind I always make it a point to understand their background of coaching in our initial conversations, and also to send them several introduction videos I have made that communicate how I go about looking at hitting, throwing, running, etc. This allows two things: I know where they’re coming from, and they know where I’m coming from. Whether you work with your athletes/coaches remotely or not, establishing this education process right from the get go is key to future development and learning.
- Having a Toolbox. Some athletes work well with “feel” drills. Some work well with verbal cues. Still others need video or visual demonstrations. Knowing which of these your athletes respond best to is a huge key in establishing synergy between player and coach. Trying to verbally cue a guy that is a very visual learner isn't going to do much for you. And vice versa. Having multiple ways to attack the same problem is going to greatly enhance your opportunity to design a successful practice for each athlete.
I hope this article helped open up some ideas for how you can go about better designing practices. If you have ideas/questions, I would love to hear them! I can be reached via email at brady@dacbaseball.com.
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