If you’ve listened to any of Michael’s podcasts on this website, as well as the recent podcasts with Mike Guadango and Nick DiMarco, it’s easy to see that the skill development route represents an evolution of the sports performance field, and is one that I believe all coaches should have a growing familiarity with. That being said, this is a tremendous primer on many ideas in the movement and motor learning space. Enjoy!
Ecological Dynamics: Considers athletes and sports teams as complex adaptive systems and examines the emergence of sports performance at the level of the performer-environment relationship and is distinguished by constraints of each individual performer and physical characteristics of participation locations for athletes activities, but also by social and cultural factors surrounding performance. (Araujo, Davids & Hristovski, 2006)
Ecological Dynamics framework sustains a scientific approach to studying the behaviors of neurobiological systems, especially processes of action, perception and cognition (Ecological Dynamics: a theoretical framework for understanding sport performance, physical education and physical activity, Seifert, l. & Davids, K., 2016).
Ecological Psychology: A field of psychology where perception is the functional act of picking up information from the environment to use for regulating movement, NOT for enhancing its automaticity.
The field of ecology studies the relationship between living things and their environments, thus taking an ecological approach in sport and with athletes considers the sporting environment and how the athlete interacts within that environment during sport to be top priority in preparing an athlete.
Constraints: Internal or external boundaries, limitations, or design features that restrict the number of possible configurations that the many degrees of freedom of a complex system can adapt. (Glazier, 2015. Towards a Grand Unified Theory of Sports Performance)
Constraints can have spatial or temporal components or both, they reside at all levels of analysis from microscopic to macroscopic, and they operate over a multitude of different time scales, from milliseconds to years.
Actions are not caused by constraints; rather, some actions are excluded by them.
Constraints Led Approach: Framework to explain how coordination emerges under constraints (Individual, task, environment) that operate under differing time scales. (Newell, 1986)
- Task Constraints: Specific to the task being performed. They are related to the goal of the task and the rules governing the task. They are not physical; rather they are implied constraints or requirements which must be met within some tolerance range in order for the movement to produce a successful action. (Glazier, 2015. Towards a Grand Unified Theory of Sports Performance)
- Individual (Organismic) Constraints: Reside in the individual movement system including those of physically, physiologically, morphologically and psychologically. (Glazier, 2015. Towards a Grand Unified Theory of Sports Performance)
- Environmental Constraints: External to the movement system. They tend to be non-specific that pertain to the spatial and temporal layout of the surrounding world that continually act on the movement system ie playing surface, weather, ambient light, crowd noise, temperature. (Glazier, 2015. Towards a Grand Unified Theory of Sports Performance)
- Task constraints are easiest to manipulate and can be accomplished by constraining time, space, number of athletes, starting positions, stances, angles, etc. The video below shows how these variables can be manipulated every single rep.
- Individual constraints are typically manipulated over longer times scales as physically, physiologically, morphologically and psychologically changes typically take time. But instructions and verbal cues can acutely constrain the individual and their attentional focus.
- Environmental constraints are also much harder to manipulate, but simple ways would be to practice/train on various surfaces (especially those similar to be seen in sport), schedule training/practice as various times (especially times similar to competition), train/practice in various weather conditions, etc.
Affordances: Opportunities for action.
The environment offers “ability” of actions – the ball has catch-ability, the gap has jump-ability, the space has run-ability. Affordances are dynamic; they can change over short and long time scales based on changes in the environment and changes in ones ability.
Information in the environment is directly perceived, which contains affordances (opportunities for action). Information specifies affordances, those properties of the environment whose perceived meaning is the actions they both allow and invite and organism to perform (Araujo, D., & Davids, K., 2011).
Technique: Technique can be considered the kinematics used during a movement. BUT the study of kinematics alone does accurately describe HOW that technique emerged.
It is better to think of technique as the execution of a decision. Technique is linked to the information source, so it isn’t absolute or permanent; it varies depending on the context in which a movement is being asked. Technique is a result of individual, task and environmental constraints of a particular movement. Technique is the outcome of intention and perception, thus technique needs to be studied in that realm.
It’s important to realize that technique is linked to the information source. It is dynamic; its not permanent and not something an athlete owns. It always changing depending on the situation and context. As you can see in the video below, the technique the athlete uses changes when they have to execute a decision and solve a problem.
Nikolai Bernstein said, “No natural phenomenon can be understood without carefully considering how it emerged.” Thus to change technique, we first need to understand the problem. Understand that it is highly un-likely that working on technique out of context, is going to stick when you bring it back to your sport.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BwXLpg9hJcM/
Representative Environment: is a framework for assessing the degree to which experimental or practice tasks simulate key aspects of specific performance environments (i.e. competition). A representative training environment will maintain functionality and action fidelity of sport. The key premise being that when practice replicates the performance environment, skills are more likely to transfer (Krause, Farrow, Reid, Buszard, Pinder, 2018)
- Functionality: Is the information in practice the same as sport. Is the information the athletes are using to guide movement useful and relevant to sport?
- Action Fidelity: The complete movement action (intention-perception-action) is an accurate (it looks, feels and acts) “picture” of sport.
Dexterity: Ability to discover a motor solution for any external situation. Bernstein further stated that dexterity is demonstrated by the ability to solve a motor problem correctly, quickly, rationally, resourcefully. (Bernstein, Dexterity and it’s Development)
Dexterity is not a property of the movements themselves, rather in the processes of the solutions
Degeneracy: Human movement system degeneracy is the ability of the athlete to effectively perform a movement in a variety of different ways through varying levels of complexity.
Repetition Without Repetition: The process of practice consists of the gradual success of a search for optimal motor solutions to the appropriate problems. Because of this, practice, when properly undertaken, does not consist in repeating the means of solution of a motor problem time after time, but in the process of solving this problem again and again by techniques which we changed and perfected from repetition to repetition. (Bernstein, 1967; The Co-ordination and Regulation of Movement)
One of my first steps into changing my approach to movement training, was adapting a rep without rep style. Meaning, I stopped lining up my athletes and going through repetition after repetition of a certain drill. Instead, I kept the “drill” but changed one aspect of the drill every rep (distance, angle, stance, start, etc). Below you can see how easy it can be to change a traditional 5-10-5 drill via a rep without rep concept.
Link to Video:
https://twitter.com/bbaperformance
Coordination:
- Bernstein said, “Coordination is overcoming excessive degrees of freedom of our movement organs, that is, turning the movement organs into controllable systems.”
- Gibson said, “Actions emergent in the temporary couplings formed among the individual and the environment.”
- Newell said, Coordination can be viewed as the function that constrain the potentially free variables (DoF) of a system into a behavioral unit (movement solution)”
- Coordination is a property of the solution that emerges from each individuals movement system in response to the constraints the system is facing.
Emergent Movement: Movement behavior or solution that results from the interaction of task, environment and individual constraints.
Self-Organization: Ability of a system to spontaneously organize itself into patterns of coordination. Specific stable patterns form through organization of the available DOF as coordinated movement during complex actions as a product of the constraints that are placed upon it.
Differential Learning: Takes advantage of fluctuations in a complex system by increasing them through no two repetitions being the same by constantly changing movement tasks creating perturbations to the complex system.
Decision-Making: Can be viewed as a functional and emergent process in which a selection is made among converging paths of actions for an intended goal (Araujo, Davids, Chow, Passos, Raab, 2009)
Learning to make successful decisions is concerned with the education of intention, attunement, calibration and mastering perceptual-motor degrees of freedom.
Degrees of Freedom: There are multiple ways for humans to perform a movement in order to achieve the same goal. There is no simple, one-way, to perform a movement. Complex movements, involving a greater number of “moving parts” (joints, muscles) involve greater amounts of degrees of freedom.
Contextual Interference: The learning phenomenon where interference during practice is beneficial to skill learning. That is, higher levels of contextual interference lead to poorer practice performance than lower levels while yielding superior retention and transfer performance (Magill & Hall, 1990).
- Low contextual interference is typically referred to as blocked practice while high contextual interference is referred to as random practice.
- Blocked training/practice consists of performing a skill over and over (repetition after repetition), the same order of drills, predictable progressions, etc.
- While blocked practice consists of varying skills often & quickly (repetition without repetition), changing the order of drills, unpredictable schedule, etc.
Below you will see what a traditional football practice might look like (Traditional). This practice schedule will typically be the same every single practice with the same/similar drills used during each period. On the right you will see what a Random practice schedule might look like. This schedule would change day to day and it would be encourage to vary the skills/drills during each period.
Explicit Learning: Learner acquires skill and knowledge deliberately and consciously. Explicit learning can be thought of as a coach trying to cue, communicate and give feedback to the athlete.
Implicit Learning: Learner acquires skills and knowledge without conscious awareness. Implicit learning can be thought of as the athlete learning as a result of experience and feedback from the environment with facilitation from the coach.
Non-Linear Pedagogy: A learner-centered approach to skill acquisition. An umbrella term for teaching and coaching that uses task and environment design to develop skill acquisition, where each learner will have individual periods and rates of learning.
Time Scales: Rates of change in motor learning. It is important that athletes learn at different rates. Athletes will not and should not progress at the same rates or need to start at the same level.
Dynamic Systems Theory: Non-Linear systems of highly inter-connected systems composed of many interacting parts, capable of constantly changing their state of organization.
Skill acquisition/adaptation: A functional performer-environment relationship (Araujo & Davids, 2011). Or a reciprocal functional relationship between and individual and the environment.
Motor Control: How the nervous system interacts with other body parts and the environment to produce purposeful, coordinated movements. (Latash, 2012. The Bliss of Motor Abundance)
Effectivities: Capabilities or physical capacities of an individual.
Research Articles:
Araújo, D., & Davids, K. (2011). What exactly is acquired during skill acquisition? Journal of Consciousness Studies,18(3-1), 7-23.
Seifert, L., Button, C., & Davids, K. (2013). Key properties of expert movement systems in sport. Sports Medicine, 43(3), 167-178.
Davids, K., Glazier, P., Araújo, D., & Bartlett, R. (2003). Movement systems as dynamical systems. Sports medicine,33(4), 245-260.
Seifert, L., Button, C., & Davids, K. (2013). Key properties of expert movement systems in sport. Sports Medicine, 43(3), 167-178.
Glazier, P. S. (2017). Towards a grand unified theory of sports performance. Human movement science, 56, 139-156.
Bartlett, R., Wheat, J., & Robins, M. (2007). Is movement variability important for sports biomechanists?. Sports biomechanics, 6(2), 224-243.
Latash, M. L. (2012). The bliss (not the problem) of motor abundance (not redundancy). Experimental brain research,217(1), 1-5.
Glazier, P. S., & Davids, K. (2009). Constraints on the complete optimization of human motion. Sports Medicine,39(1), 15-28.
Seifert, L., Button, C., & Davids, K. (2013). Key properties of expert movement systems in sport. Sports Medicine, 43(3), 167-178.
Strafford, B. W., Van Der Steen, P., Davids, K., & Stone, J. A. (2018). Parkour as a donor sport for athletic development in youth team sports: insights through an ecological dynamics lens. Sports medicine-open, 4(1), 21.
Renshaw, I., Davids, K., Araújo, D., Lucas, A., Roberts, W. M., Newcombe, D. J., & Franks, B. (2018). Evaluating Weaknesses of “Cognitive-Perceptual Training” and “Brain Training” Methods in Sport: An Ecological Dynamics Critique.Frontiers in Psychology.
Franks, B., Newcombe, D., Roberts, W. M., & Jakeman, J. (2017). Shhh… We’re talking about the Quiet Eye! A Perceptual Approach to the Transfer of Skill: Quiet Eye as an Insight into Perception-Action Coupling in Elite Football.
Van der Kamp, J., Dicks, M., Navia, J., & Noël, B. (2018). Goalkeeping in the soccer penalty kick: it is time we take affordance-based control seriously!. Sportwissenschaft, 48(2), 169-175.
Teques, P., Araújo, D., Seifert, L., del Campo, V. L., & Davids, K. (2017). The resonant system: linking brain–body–environment in sport performance☆. In Progress in brain research (Vol. 234, pp. 33-52). Elsevier.
Farrow, D., & Robertson, S. (2017). Development of a skill acquisition periodisation framework for high-performance sport. Sports Medicine, 47(6), 1043-1054.
Spiteri, T., McIntyre, F., Specos, C., & Myszka, S. (2018). Cognitive Training for Agility: The Integration Between Perception and Action. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 40(1), 39-46.
Nimphius, S., Callaghan, S. J., Spiteri, T., & Lockie, R. G. (2016). Change of direction deficit: A more isolated measure of change of direction performance than total 505 time.Journal of strength and conditioning research, 30(11), 3024-3032.
Hart, N. H., Spiteri, T., Lockie, R. G., Nimphius, S., & Newton, R. U. (2014). Detecting deficits in change of direction performance using the preplanned multidirectional Australian Football League agility test. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 28(12), 3552-3556.
Jeffreys, I. (2011). A task-based approach to developing context-specific agility. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 33(4), 52-59.
Jeffreys, I., Huggins, S., & Davies, N. (2018). Delivering a gamespeed-focused speed and agility development program in an English premier league soccer academy. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 40(3), 23-32.
Books
- Nonlinear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition – Chow, Davids, Renshaw, Button
- Dynamics of Skill Acquisition – Davids, Button, Bennett
- Dexterity and It’s Development – Bernstein
- Routledge Handbook of Sport Expertise – Baker & Farrow
- Motor Learning in Practice – A Constraints Led Approach – Renshaw, Davids, Savelsbergh
- Skill Acquisition in Sport: Research, Theory & Practice – Hodges & Williams
- Developing Sport Expertise: Researchers and Coaches Put Theory into Practice – Farrow, Baker & MacMahon
- Gamespeed – Ian Jeffreys
- The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception – JJ Gibson
- Visual Perception and Action in Sport – Davids, Williams & Williams
- Performance Psychology: Perception, Action, Cognition, and Emotion – Raab, Lobinger, Hoffmann, Pizzera, Laborde
- Thinking In Systems: A Primer – Meadows & Wright
- Complex Systems in Sport – Davids
- Simplexity: Simplifying Principles for a Complex World – Berthoz
- Visual Perception: Physiology, Psychology, and Ecology – Bruce, Green, Georgeson
Podcasts
- Perception-Action Podcast: Rob Gray
- Player Development Project
- The Talent Equation
- Elite Performance Podcast
- Boston StrongCast
Websites
About Michael Zweifel
Michael Zweifel is the owner and head of sports performance for “Building Better Athletes” performance center in Dubuque, Iowa.
Michael is a CSCS, IYCA certified practitioner, and was the all time NCAA leading receiver with 463 receptions in his playing days at University of Dubuque.
Building Better Athletes (BBA) is committed to an evidence based practice towards sports performance, and attaching physical preparation from every angle possible – physical, mental, nutritional, soft-tissue, mobility. Our focus is building the athlete from the ground up by mastering the fundamentals of movement mastery, strength/power training, recovery modalities, and giving athletes ownership of the Other 23.
Using these methods and principles, BBA has been fortunate to help athletes to:
- 5 NFL Players
- 1 CFL Player
- 1 Gatorade State Player of the Year (Basketball)
- 7 Collegiate All-Americans
- 12 Conference Player of the Year
- 11 Division I Athletes
- 52 All-Conference Athletes
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