Reference

Otte, F. W., Davids, K., Millar, S. K., & Klatt, S. (2021). Understanding how athletes learn: Integrating skill training concepts, theory and practice from an ecological perspective. Applied Coaching Research Journal, 7, 22-32.

🚀 Article in 3 Sentences

1. Gives and introduction to Ecological Dynamics and some of the key ideas around it
2. Part A: Goes through the different stages of learning in movement coordination and perceptual learning
3. Part B: Goes through the implications of Part A and how to implement them in practice

👨‍🏫Who should read this?

Great read for coaches that want to get started with skill acquisition. This was written in a very accessible way and presents the key ideas of the Ecological Dynamics in a way that’s easy to understand

🎾How Article will influence my coaching

• The skill development stages are ‘cohesive’ and there will be movements between the stages during the learning process
• The search and discovery of functional movement solutions depends on athletes becoming more perceptually aware of the specifying information in the environment
• Verbal instruction and feedback are an additional tool for constraining, moderating and directing athletes’ attention and search activities in practice

📃Takeaways for coaches

• The key idea of the ecological approach is based around “the continuous integration and interactions between athletes and their environments”
• Athletes need to ‘learn to learn to move’ in specific performance contexts. Practice designs must have a context and content to help develop more skilfull players
• Every environment is full of affordances that emerge and decay constantly. Perceiving emerging opportunities for for action and selectively choosing whether to act or not are hallmarks of highly skilled players
• A huge part of session design is understanding how to encourage athletes to search for, discover and exploit information and movement solutions to solve performance problems
• Different athletes will have different action capacities so will solve problems in different ways
• Knowledge of which constraint to manipulate and when is very important for coaches to understand