Learning and performing: What can theory offer high performance sports practitioners?

🚀 Article in 3 Sentences

1. The paper starts by discussing the views of performance and learning from a cognitive viewpoint before moving on to the distinctions between performing and learning. How we measure and test for learning is another issue discussed
2. Key concepts in ecological dynamics that considers learning and performance as being distinct, yet inextricably linked are discussed. Ecological Dynamics advocates a deep integration of learning and performing based on the key principle of the mutuality of the learner and the environments in which they are required to perform
3. Ideas and implications for using principles of Ecological Dynamics to support context-specific skill-learning practices in high performance sport are talked about.

🤝Impressions

Paper went straight to the ‘must read’ category. Really impressive paper with lots of takeaways for coaches. Some of the practical suggestions for testing learning and how we can use principles to design better practice tasks to support learning really stood out for me

👨‍🏫Who should read this?

Every practitioner should read this

🎾How Article will influence my coaching

• The ability of highly skill performers depends on their ability to excel at learning in performance to quickly coordinate their motor solutions to the affordances in the environment to achieve their task goal
• We can use transfer tests to ‘test’ learning. We can see the ability of the learner to adapt the skill they have learned to novel situations that may require novel variations of the learned skill. These tests also examine how the learners can deal with changes in personal characteristics
• Differing anxiety levels change the intentions of the performer, what they perceive and consequently how they move
• Performance is a reflection of the coaches’ ability to ‘prepare’ performers for competition by ‘teaching’ or ‘coaching’ them, so they are capable of demonstrating the necessary skills in a performance setting
• We need to assess learning on how well they can adapt to the specific constraints and demands of the performance context.
• The skills and abilities that an individual develops over short, medium and long term time frames are shaped by the environments that the players are exposed to and the affordances that are present.
• Learn in action is a nice way to describe how athletes can learn to adapt to take advantage of emerging opportunities for action.
• The coach is a learning designer that needs to create practice environments “that enable learners to self-regulate by eliciting desired intentions, dealing with emotions and coupling perception and action to succeed in performance”

📃Takeaways for coaches

• The ‘functionality of the fit’ between the individual and the environment is always a work in progress due to the dynamic nature of the relationship. The relationship is non-linear which can ‘regress, stabilise or progress’ depending on an individuals experience over the life course.
• Learning does not only occur in formalised, structured teaching and coaching sessions. Learning opportunities also emerge during sport performance which gives players real life experiences of engaging with the constraints of competition.
• Exploratory activities gives individuals opportunities to fine tune their attention as they detect what properties of the environment are most meaningful for them to support and exploit their action capabilities**.**
• Periods of individualised exploration are required to help with the perception and learning of affordances. Exploratory activities gives individuals opportunities to fine tune their attention as they detect what properties of the environment are most meaningful for them to support and exploit their action capabilities.
• If the specifying information is removed from the environment the opportunity to learn to exploit relevant information to regulate actions will be limit as the opportunity to ‘fine tune’ attention is denied.
• RLD proposes that practitioners should sample situation-specific information from performance environment which can then be included to design ‘contextualised’ practice tasks.
• We can increase an individuals knowledge ‘of’ the performance environment through exposure to rich and varied practice environments. The exposure will help them learn to self-regulate and adapt stable perception-action couplings to emergent problems. The key challenge for coaches is how to use practice design, feedback and instructions to guide the exploratory activities of a learner.
• Need to learn and perform puts significant demands on the athletes as they have to balance exploration and performance actions
• Some structure is really important such as having clear intentions. However, many athletes struggle to take advantage of emerging opportunities for actions in the performance environment

🥇Top Quotes

 💡 An implication of these issues for high performance sport is that learning needs to be assessed by how well a learner adapts to the specific constraints and demands of a performance context. This key idea has important implications for performance analysis and evaluation in sport. 

💡 Consequently, when attempting to work with sports practitioners to prepare athletes to perform in competitive environments, performance variables cannot be ignored and removed because of the important relationship between performance and learning. In fact, we suggest that these variables should be sampled from competitive performance environments and embraced in practice designs as their presence can result in deeply significant changes in intentions, perceptions and actions to which an athlete needs to adapt

💡 An additional way to test learning is to use a transfer test to examine the ability of the learner to adapt the skill they have learned to novel situations, or environments and may include requiring the production of novel variations of the learned skill 

💡 For example, many studies have revealed how differing anxiety levels change intentions of performers, what they perceive and, consequently, how they move.

💡 Over short, medium and long time frames, the skills and abilities that each individual develops are shaped by all the environments or landscapes of affordances, providing opportunities for actions, to which athletes are exposed 

💡 Learning is concerned with developing an increasingly functional fit between each individual and a performance environment and highlights that humans perceive information in the environment in relation to its value and meaningfulness detected in affordances. 

💡 Exploratory activity enables individuals to ‘fine-tune’ their attention as they detect meaningful properties of the environment to support and exploit their action capabilities

💡 The implication for practitioners is that they should design learning for each stage by providing an initial period of search and exploration, followed by a discovery and stabilization phase. For more advanced performers learning activities should enhance their ability to exploit the available affordances 

💡 If a coach or teacher (wittingly or unwittingly) reduces or removes specifying variables present in an environment, thereby reducing task specificity, the opportunity to learn to exploit relevant information to regulate actions may be limited, as the opportunity to learn to differentiate between (un)helpful information is denied. 

💡 Stability (of performance outcome) is, therefore, more likely to be achieved by movement adaptability through enhanced functional variability and the development of softly assembled synergies (temporary coordination patterns) that satisfy task demands at any moment. 

💡 Exposing learners to rich and varied practice environments can promote opportunities for individuals to develop knowledge of the performance environment by learning to self-regulate and adapt (relatively) stable perception-action couplings to emergent problems 

💡 Instead, practitioners would vary individual, task and environmental constraints to promote exploration and search activities to guide learner’s perceptual attunement and re-calibration of actions (i.e. through scaling the use of the perceptual variable) to enhance transfer of learning

💡 Over short, medium and long time frames, the skills and abilities that each individual develops are shaped by all the environments or landscapes of affordances, providing opportunities for actions, to which athletes are exposed

💡 When expert performance is predicated on the capacity to precisely calibrate actions to exploit the specific affordances available in competitive performance contexts , practice needs to occur much more often under ‘context-dependent’ constraints’ of competition to prepare athletes for performance.

💡 If successful performance requires adaptability to changes in personal, task and/or environmental characteristics, why would we not practice in performance environments that challenge individuals to deal with dynamic individual, task and environmental constraints that emerge in competitive contexts?

🔍Resources 

Detailed Notes

Here's the link to my detailed breakdown of the paper. I go through each section of the piece and pick out the parts that stick out to me 

https://mrtenniscoach-researchreview.notion.site/Learning-and-performing-What-can-theory-offer-high-performance-sports-practitioners-f5135ce13f09468c87abbd42888182c0

Link to full paper

Check out the full paper below

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362596076_Learning_and_performing_What_can_theory_offer_high_performance_sports_practitioners

Reference

Renshaw, Ian, Keith Davids, and Mark O'Sullivan. "Learning and performing: What can theory offer high performance sports practitioners?." Brazilian Journal of Motor Behavior 16.2 (2022): 162-178.