Merging Athletic Development With Skill Acquisition: Developing Agility Using an Ecological Dynamics Approach

                                                  Photo by John Torcasio on Unsplash

🚀 Article in 3 Sentences

1. Introduces what is involved in agility and how maintaining the perception-action relationship is key when creating practice tasks to develop agility through an ecological dynamics approach
2. Discusses how we can use a CLA to design agility tasks to promote learning and transfer
3. Gives 3 Examples of tasks designed to work on agility

🤝Impressions

The research around agility really got me thinking in a more ecological way and this paper does an excellent job exploring developing agility utilising an Ecological Dynamics Approach.

👨‍🏫Who should read this?

I think it would be really beneficial for any coach to read. The practical examples at the end of the paper are really good and help bring some of the theoretical insights into life.

🎾How Article will influence my coaching

• Coadaptation, a key aspect of designing agility tasks, involves manipulating opposing/supporting players to promote adaptability.- Think a bit more about how you are manipulating the opposing players and what behaviours are emerging
• Reducing time and space challenges players to execute skills under higher defensive pressure, but it also affects the physical demands of the task.-It’s really important to be aware of how the constraints you implement may affect the physical demands of the task.

📃Takeaways for coaches

• Agility varies depending on the demands of the task and differs among sports. It will also even vary between tasks in the same sport -It’s very important to understand the demands of the task when designing tasks to work on agility.
• Agility is a complex skill that involves using perception to guide actions, rather than just following pre-determined movements Maintaining the perception-action relationship is key when creating practice tasks to develop agility through an ecological dynamics approach..-Be aware that the perceptual component of agility is a really crucial part of developing the skill
• Representative learning design (RLD) has two important characteristics-1) Functionality, which means that the information and constraints used in training are similar to those in competition.2)Action fidelity, which refers to the correlation between performance actions during training and in competition. -When putting RLD into practice it’s really important to keep these characteristics in mind
• Movement performance is a functional solution that arises from the interaction of individual, task, and environmental constraints-Think about how the different constraints are interacting to shape the movement solutions that emerge
• Small sided games are effective for developing agility as they mimic the constraints of real competition, enabling players to learn how to respond to the necessary information to guide their actions.-SSG’S Allow us to incorporate the key constraints of the game so the player’s can become attuned to the information to guide their actions.
• Transfer in ecological dynamics varies from general to specific, depending on the amount of specifying information provided in practice tasks. More specifying information leads to specific transfer, while less specific information leads to more general transfer.-The amount of transfer that occurs from training will depend on how ‘specifying’ the information is.
• Coaches can create agility training tasks that promote transfer to competition by using Representative Learning Design and co-adaptation principles, encouraging players to attune to important information sources.-The principles of RLD and co-adaptation are crucial in the design of agility tasks that will promote transfer to competition.
• When assessing an athlete's skill level in sports that involve a range of skills, it is important for practitioners to analyse their performance individually. Factors such as age, playing experience, and competition level may be considered, but it is crucial to identify specific areas of strength and weakness. For instance, a football player who excels in attacking may have poor defensive agility skills, and vice versa.
• The factors discussed here emphasize the importance of individualized practice design. A "copy-and-paste" approach to practice does not yield optimal results.-The importance of individualised constraints manipulations and practice design can’t be stressed enough
• Another constraint can be imposed on the defending team, allowing each defender to tackle only one attacker. This means that whenever an attacker has possession of the ball, they will have to evade only one defender, with plenty of space to do so.-I thought this was a really clever constraint manipulation that would be really effective

🥇Top Quotes

💡 Agility is a complex quality that involves the coupling of perceptual information to guide actions (and vice versa) and not simply the execution of a predetermined movement 

💡 Viewing agility through an ecological dynamics lens encourages practitioners to maintain this perception–action relationship to create representative practice tasks. 

💡 Importantly, an agility solution will emerge based on (a) the athlete’s level of attunement to the key information in the performance environment (perception), (b) the athlete’s action capabilities (action), and (c) their intentions 

💡 From an ecological dynamics perspective, transfer occurs on a spectrum of generality to specificity . A greater amount of specifying information will typically lead to a greater specificity of transfer, whereas less specific information in a practice task will tend to provide more general transfer 

💡 The key to skill acquisition is for the individual to learn to adapt to the constraints that affect them at any given moment 

💡 Incorporating the principles of Representative Learning Design and co-adaptation, coaches can design agility training tasks that will encourage players to attune to key information sources to promote transfer to the competition setting. 

Reference

Cassidy, J., Young, W., Gorman, A., & Kelly, V. (2022). Merging Athletic Development With Skill Acquisition: Developing Agility Using an Ecological Dynamics Approach. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 10-1519.