Coach Approaches to Practice Design in Performance Tennis

Link to my more detailed breakdown of the paper

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Coaches Approach to Practice Design in Performance Tennis

🚀 Article in 3 Sentences

1. Coaches didn’t cite learning from formal learning opportunities as a big influence on their coaching. The biggest influence was informal learning such as conversations with other coaches and on the job experience

2. Information Processing Model was the main theory used by the coaches. They often separated skill from it’s context and put a big emphasis on high levels of volume and repetition

3. The ‘Form of Life’ has a massive influence on how coaches coach

🤝Impressions

Very interesting article that looks at how coaches design their practices for ‘performance’ players. The ‘FoL’ greatly influences how these coaches design their practices. The practices are mainly informed by the information processing approach. Tennis Coaching often separates the skill from the environment. There is also a big focus on high volume and high reps and building the ‘skill’

The article also highlights how the formal education the coaches had received has very little influence on how they coach and it’s the informal things like chatting to other coaches and coaching experience has had the biggest impact. The information from the coaching courses also encouraged the coaches to coach in an ‘information processing way’

🎾How Article will influence my coaching

- I will be more aware of the influence of the ‘Form of Life’ on coaches and maybe help them understand why they are coaching the way they are

- There is a global form of life in tennis and this will be very hard to change.

- How can we make formal coach education less formal?

- Coaches placed a lot of value on what they learned through trial and error and experience. How can we create opportunities to get this type of learning but in a more structured way?

- Be more aware of if you are developing knowledge ‘about’ rather than ‘knowledge of’. Maybe a small bit guilty of developing the ‘about’.

- Coaches may think they are using constraints but they aren't constraining to afford

🥇Top Quotes

💡 Coaches emerged as learners, who developed their knowledge through unmediated, informal learning opportunities, for example reflective practice and ‘on the job’ experience. 

💡 Generally, coaches designed drill-based tasks with the intention of developing players who could consistently perform with good technique under physical strain. This approach suggests that coaches separate skill (seen as an action) and physical development from perceptual cues, which may lead to undesirable player behaviour and skill development from perceptual cues, which may lead to undesirable player behaviour and skill development

💡 This means that, although players may be able to describe what they want to do, they may be less able to find a functional solution for themselves. 

💡 Instead, designing a variety of sport-specific practice environments and contexts within which learners interact may help coaches to develop players’ knowledge of the problem by enabling them to become more attuned to the information sources that constrain functional behaviour. 

💡 Through their experiences, coaches may interact with consistent social and cultural constraints that create a tennis ‘form of life’. Coach beliefs and, in turn, practice design may therefore reflect the social, cultural and historical constraints that exist within tennis both internationally and nationally.

Link to the original paper 

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Coach Approaches to Practice Design in Performance Tennis

Reference to paper

Anderson, E., Stone, J. A., Dunn, M., & Heller, B. (2021). Coach approaches to practice design in performance tennis. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 16(6), 1281-1292.