Recently, Rob Gray posted a podcast in response to an article requesting “more research-informed guidelines” to support the constraints-led approach (CLA) in coaching.
Well worth a listen for anyone interested in what the CLA really is.
I do share Rob’s suspicions about the authors’ (mis)understanding of the CLA.
But I also think the paper does raise some valid questions about how to apply the CLA, especially for new and volunteer coaches.
The authors raised the case of a parent-coach, “…with limited (or no) playing and coaching experience who now finds themself in the role of coaching their child’s…team.”
And these people are out there, and they are increasingly important. With less and less opportunity for free play, these semi-structured sessions delivered by inexperienced, volunteer coaches might be the child’s only chance to experience the joy of playing a sport…and that child deserve better than drills, and a game at the end if they behave.
Which is one compelling reason why I believe that entry-level coaches need to be encouraged to use the CLA and other games-based approaches to facilitating engagement with sport.
And those entry-level coaches deserve better than being told that the CLA is obvious. Or being given an app full of drills and told to deliver them.
How hard is hard enough? How challenging should practice be?
I had never heard Rob’s 70-75% success rate measure. It makes perfect sense — not so hard that it discourages the players, not so easy they become bored.
But I had not seen this quantified. Maybe I’ve not read the right papers, yet? Or it’s coming in Rob’s new book.
btw — it’s not so difficult to quantify this success rate in practice. Not achieving an outcome more than twice in three tries (66%)? Practice is too hard — dial back the challenge. Better than three out of four (75%)? It’s probably getting to be too easy, and time to tighten the constraints, or add a new challenge.
What does “good” look like?
If we agree that there are no “perfect” technical movement patterns (I think we probably can?), what are the performance outcomes we want to encourage?
Back to basics. In cricket:
- Batters score runs and stay in;
- Bowlers save runs and get batters out.
I know. The relative importance of runs scored vs. time at the wicket changes depending on the format. But there will be times, even in T10, when not getting out will matter more than trying to hit another 6. And a star batter won’t score any more runs once he is sat back down in the pavilion.
We can’t offer a fully representative, Test Match-style, game. But we could go with “hit the first ball there, the next one over there, and one back over my head”. It’s actually much more like playing cricket by deliberately hitting the ball to a defined spot — “hitting the gaps” — rather than performing a pre-defined movement pattern.
Focus on the “what” to do, maybe on the “why”, don’t worry too much about the “how”.
In some respects, the ECB’s Core Principles (from the Core Coaching — level 2 — course) are actually more sophisticated than it appears, as a guide to technique, with its focus on (technical) outcomes:
- how the bat meets the ball, not how the hands grip the bat to present the face of the bat;
- energy through the ball at release, not the relative position of non-bowling & bowling arms, timing of movements.
Get this right, and you can go and play the game, and then learn when to swing the bat through the ball, when to pull across the line.
For a bowler, if energy transfer through the ball is efficient, it has to go where it is intended.
The guidelines do exist, but probably are dismissed as too simple.
And what is “bad”?
The Laws of the game define what is fair and what is not.
- Batters can only hit the ball once, and need to use their bat rather than their legs to stop the ball.
- Bowlers have to keep their bowling arm straight, and not bowl beyond the crease.
- Catches only count if the ball doesn’t touch the ground.
Some techniques might be considered inefficient (running 20 yards to bowl at 40mph), but if they are effective, maybe leave the player to work it out at this stage.
There is a need for more explicit guidelines on what might be injurious movement patterns.
We used to have guidance on “mixed action” at BFC for bowlers, for example, but further research seemed to suggest that it was alignment at FFC that was more directly correlated with (potential) injury.
But all this, perhaps, can wait for a little later in the development pathway.
We are really considering advice for beginner coaches, working with children new to the game.
Conclusions
I am not convinced that there is really any real need for evidence-based, research-informed guidelines to support coaches starting out with the CLA.
But perhaps some demystification would help.
And re-stating the purpose, both of CLA — creating a learning environment without prescribing the (movement) solutions — and of early-stage coaching — allowing children to fall in love with the game.
The Teesra 
What do you think? Leave a reply.