Introduction

Do you know why you coach in the way that you do?

This question is often overlooked by practitioners. Indeed, if anyone had asked us that question when we first started teaching and coaching, we would have answered with: “well, this is what teaching or coaching is, isn’t it?” As trained teachers, who have also attended a lot of coaching courses as ‘coaches’, we simply copied the methods used with us by our teachers and coaches, and what coach educators have shown us over the years.

However, as curious academics and practitioners, we began to ask questions, especially when what we were doing seemed to have limited impact. We therefore began to ask: “why do my athletes perform really well in practice, but can’t seem to transfer this to the competitive environment?” “Why can’t they copy my ‘perfect’ demonstrations?” Why does their technique break down under the pressure of the game?” and “why do we ask athletes to learn in emotionless and contextless environments and then expect them to perform when anxious, angry or excited in meaningful competitions?” For us, the traditional motor learning literature did not seem to provide too many answers. But we began to see how a fusion of ecological and dynamic systems theories that emerged within the psychology and motor learning sub-disciplines might provide us with a sound theoretical model upon which to build practice.

Knowing why you are adopting specific methods in your work and being able to defend it with supporting evidence is something that all practitioners should be able to explain. When undertaking an objective review of your coaching, we believe the starting point is: To understand why you coach the way you do. In the next blog we will provide you with a short (ish) questionnaire that will allow you to take a deep dive into your own beliefs and understanding of what we mean by being skilled, how people learn and what teaching or coaching strategies are needed to help people reach their full potential. Over time, we will unpack these ideas on the website as well as making links to relevant past and the latest research (as they emerge), talk to academics and coaches about the ideas, or point you to some of the excellent podcast resources we have provided. Of course, there are also some excellent textbooks that can help you and we have listed many of these in the Resources Section of the website.

With regards to why we think a Constraint-Led Approach (CLA) is worth considering, we obviously need to provide you with some informed evidence as to why we believe it is a viable alternative that will meet your and most importantly, your athletes’ needs. Our aim in the first few blogs we will share with you over the coming weeks is to introduce and define the key concepts and ideas that underpin a CLA and give you practice examples and tools to enable you to build your own CLA-based learning environments.

To start, in this article, we aim to answer some of the common questions about a Constraint-Led Approach. Specifically, we will focus on how coaches and teachers can gain more clarity around practice design for skill acquisition and talent development in different sports and how coaches might use this approach on the ground.

Our book aims to provide an introduction to CLA and answers many of the questions below in much more depth as well as giving practice examples from field hockey, golf and hurdling in track and field.

A Dialogue about Common Misconceptions

I have heard from some people that CLA only works with children, while others have told me it is great for those who teach games but doesn’t work well in individual sports.

• What kind of coaches can use CLA?

Across the spectrum the CLA methods can be used by all coaches from beginners to elite level practitioners. The pedagogical principles are the same but are just used in different ways because of the different needs of different athletes, performing and learning at different levels. The principles of a CLA are useful for sport practitioners in different sports, from team games to individual sports, adventure sports to those with more stable environments (e.g., archery, gymnastics, springboard diving).

Ross Pinder has helped coaches implement CLA informed practice in Paralympic sports in a wide range of sport including table tennis, archery, athletics and wheelchair rugby

When I see coaches using a CLA in their sessions, for me it looks exactly like any good traditional session. So, the theoretical approach underpinning session design doesn’t really matter, does it?

Whilst some aspects of a CLA session may superficially appear to be similar to those seen in traditional sessions, the ‘why’ that sits behind the session design is fundamentally different because, quite simply, the intentions of the coach are fundamentally different. In traditional sessions the goal for coaches is the acquisition of skill via the (re)production of motor programs and schemas that sit inside the brain and that are based on learners attempting to replicate the perfect technique. In contrast, in a CLA, the goal of the coach is to develop skill adaptability to improve the ‘fit’ between the individual performer and their environment. The goal is therefore based on attempts to promote functional movements via enhanced perception-action coupling.

The differing intentions mean that coaches using CLA tend not to have a mental model of a skill or pattern of play in mind when facilitating learning for athletes. The CLA approach is based on supporting learners in making the most of their capacities, skills, and knowledge in adapting to the challenges of a performance environment. The coach can help them to understand the importance of performance variability which helps learners to satisfy interacting constraints.

Isn’t a CLA just ‘good coaching’ or ‘common sense’?

Coaches need much more than common sense which implies that knowledge is a static body of information that ‘one either has or doesn’t have’. Knowledge (theory and understanding) about learning, development, performing, training, practising, coaching and teaching are constantly developing and changing over time. The development of contemporary scientific theory that continually underpins ‘good coaching’ will be updated and refined over time. But if every coach was already using methods based on contemporary scientific theory and understanding, there would be little need to run coach development courses. The problem is the inertia in current skill acquisition and talent development programmes which prevents coaches and practitioners from trying to improve their practice every day. There are a lot of parallels between what athletes need to do every day and what coaches need to do all the time...constantly striving to improve as professionals.

I have heard that a CLA means that we just set up games and let them play. So, you don’t need to coach during sessions.

This is a common misconception and is completely wrong. Using CLA methods to enhance athlete learning and performance is highly challenging and demanding of coaches at all levels. While coaches who use a CLA will generally talk less and will devise games that are representative of ‘the’ game, they are still undertaking key coaching tasks such as observing and evaluating how well the task is matched to the needs of the individuals in the session. When needed they will ‘intervene’ (coach!) by manipulating key selected constraints or by providing verbal ‘information’ often in the form of questioning to direct the athlete’s learning and search for performance solutions. Importantly, CLA coaches understand that what they say acts as a temporary ‘informational constraint’ that can have a profound impact on athlete’s emotions, intentions, and actions. Coaches need to plan what they are going to say in just as much detail as the activities they ask the athletes to do. One final point, a false assumption is based on the premise that a CLA can only be used by coaches of team games. As highlighted above, a CLA can be adopted across all sports and physical activities and with all age groups.

“Planning what you say when implementing a CLA is just as important as planning what activities you are going to do.”

— Ian Renshaw

Coaches who have been on coaching courses where they have been told all about CLA have told me it’s just common sense.

Although this is true to an extent, observations of coaching practice and discussions with elite and developmental coaches suggest that they are, either not using these 'common sense' ideas at all, or they are using them in an ineffective and inefficient way, hampered by misunderstandings or lack of detailed understanding. As with all methods: practitioners can become better at using the CLA approach in a more refined and astute way with experience and understanding. Some sport practitioners seem to be captured by manuals which prescribe ‘step-by-step’ what to do in specific coaching contexts; a bit like ‘coaching by numbers’. Also, some of these materials are based on outdated motor learning principles, which provide an outdated understanding of how learning occurs. There is a strong historical element to the use of pedagogical practice in their work.

Always keep in mind that scientific knowledge and understanding is never a static entity which does not change over time.

A major challenge for coaches and coach developers is to keep up with new scientific ideas, without being swamped by fads, fashions and trends.

I don’t have time to do much up front preparation (I work full-time you know!) Can you just give me the recipe so I can just turn up and run it?

While some people have suggested that you need to have the skills and knowledge equivalent to being a fighter pilot to run CLA sessions, we disagree. Spending some time learning about the principles and ideas of a CLA would, we believe, give coaches a basic framework to ‘design their own recipes’, ones that are best suited to the likes and needs of the consumers of those sessions. This is also an enjoyable challenge that many coaches would benefit from: being creative in the way that practice tasks are (re)designed to account for individual needs and specific performance demands.

**You don’t need fighter pilot level skills to coach or teach using a CLA**
Creator: https://pixy.org/ | Credit: https://pixy.org/474843/
Copyright: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

However, we do understand that many coaches are volunteers who are pressed for time and don’t have the time to spend hours developing practice plans. We would suggest that for this group of coaches, basing practice on simple or adapted games allied to some basic understanding of a CLA could be the way forward. For coaches who have a little more time, time spent developing knowledge and understanding, and then building a series of useful resources for their specific coaching environment, will enable them to fully adopt a CLA in their own sessions.

How do we choose which Task/Athlete/Environmental constraints to use in a session?

Coaches can use empirical knowledge from research to make their decisions about which constraints they decide to manipulate and consider in their work. They also need to use their experiential knowledge to decide on innovative ways to facilitate learning for each individual. Experiential knowledge refers to the information and understanding that you will have developed over many weeks, months and years working with an athlete or group in a specific sport and performance level. Typically, task constraints are easily manipulated by the coach, but it is important to remember that they do interact with the personal constraints of each individual. This potential for interactions between task and personal constraints can lead to different outcomes and learning trajectories in the same group of learners. Physical Environmental constraints are not easy to manipulate but perhaps changing systems is a good way to approach this challenge. It is also important to understand that for the athlete, the coach is an important part of the physical environment in which they practice and perform, and the coach plays a significant part in determining the socio-cultural constraints that play an important role in shaping the emotions, intentions and perception-action couplings of performers.

I have been told that a CLA is very much in favour of creating implicit learning opportunities? What does that look like?

Implicit learning looks different because of its emphasis on less prescription, corrective feedback and verbal instruction in teaching and greater emphasis on the learning process of each individual.

Coaches using CLA tend not to have a specific mental model of a technique or pattern of play in mind when facilitating learning through rehearsal and repetition. This approach helps them to understand the importance of performance variability which is focused on adaptations of learners to interacting constraints

How do we clarify the link between coach development and effective deployment of development practices on the ground – placing coach development front and centre is essential for success.

This question needs greater attention than we can provide in this short space, however, at the heart of the issue is the need for coach developers to move away from the classroom and onto the playing fields, courts, sports halls, swimming pools, rivers and athletic tracks to work alongside coaches. Later, we will describe and discuss some innovative work that is already happening in this space with innovative coach developers and high performance coaches with some spectacular results.

How do we develop the skills in coaches needed to deliver CLA?

Start by scrutinising current coach education systems; go back to ideas and ways of doing things that seem ‘set in stone’ and challenge understanding of them; keep ideas that stand up to such intense scrutiny and find ways to change those that do not; seek areas for improvement; keep asking questions and finding answers; challenge traditional practices and only keep or maintain those that stand up to contemporary scientific and theoretical scrutiny; support coaches to keep learning and improving their practice; above all empower them in sharing experiential knowledge on their innovations and creativity: what worked and what didn’t and how things can be changed and improved in small but meaningful ways.

What does a good Coach Development Programme look like?

We believe that a good programme is one that is founded on contemporary theory in motor learning, skill acquisition, talent development and pedagogy in sport and PE. There is also a need to consider the findings of scientific studies which have underpinned the key principles of learning and development; Led by continuous infusion of shared experiential knowledge of practitioners, even athletes empowered to share experiences; Includes many practical sessions to demonstrate the application of scientific ideas and theory; Plenty of critical thinking and questioning of methods……all this is continuously implemented and only the best practice is maintained to train coaches

Where does a CLA fit when working with high performance groups that include a range of sport science staff?

We like to see the role of the Head Coach as the chief architect, who co-ordinates the overall programme design. This means that all the sub-teams who work with the coach are required to adopt a trans-disciplinary approach (all practitioners working together to focus on specific issues and challenges, from different sub-disciplines).

Coaching is often described as an ‘art’. We agree, but we also believe that effective coaching should be built on a sound scientific knowledge base. Without this knowledge, programmes may well be at best ineffective and at worst dangerous.

Coaching is a complex task that requires understanding of how skill is developed, the science behind physical preparation and superb understanding of the psychology of people. The coach needs to be a “trans-disciplinarian”, that is they must have an understanding of how to construct a training programme that considers and integrates all areas that affect performance. They must have the ability to identify and focus on specific issues and challenges that an individual or a group are facing in competitive performance (e.g., fitness, performance under pressure, successful preparation and recovery, emotional self-regulation and more. Using a transdisciplinary approach, most well-resourced high-performance teams use specialist assistant coaches, and sport science support. Head coaches need to identify and appoint specialist experts who can integrate their specialist knowledge towards achieving the overall goals of performance preparation and developing talent. As such, the key challenge is how (head) coaches integrate the vast amounts of information and advice that the sport scientists can provide us with into our training and competition programme.

So, can you tell me more about CLA? The why, what, how and when.

This is exactly what the website has been set up to do, but it will take us more than one short blog! Over the next few weeks and months, we will answer the following:

Key Questions:

• What do we mean by CLA?

• What are the key principles?

• Does self organisation mean we don’t need to coach them?

• What types of constraints?

• How do sports Identify constraints?

• What are the benefits of this approach?

• What can’t it do? Where doesn’t it work?

• Can it fit with other approaches?

• What in heaven are affordances 😊?

Delivering principled guidelines for designing practice sessions utilising constraints

Key Questions:

• What does practice design look like in CLA?

• If we simply allow learners to solve the problem themselves, what do we say to them? What about the role of instructions and feedback?

• A common misconception is that Self Organisation means we just set up a game and tell them to get on with it and work it out for themselves.

Final Comment

We hope you have enjoyed this first (proper) blog from The Constraint Collective. We want to co-create this platform, so it gives you what you need, so please feel free to leave ideas, suggestions and comments or contact us directly.