Free Play Academy Newsletter #29
Topics that will be covered:
1. Technique in Sport is misunderstood. (Continued..)
2. Jimmy Bitter.
3. Developing the skill of decision-making.
Technique in Sport is misunderstood. (Continued..)
What if our misunderstanding of what technique actually is, underpins the work we do with our players?
What if the technical training that has become a main pillar in the way we develop our young lacrosse players, only really acts as a placebo for learning and improvement?
What if consistently drilling players in movement patterns builds coordination and confidence, but not a lot else?
We’re going to break down what technique is and how we should go about developing it.
For the next few weeks we’ll be touching on the many facets of what comprises technique today with Play.
We would all agree that there has been a huge decline over the last few decades in child centred play.
You only have to walk through the local park to see that “pick-up” games are almost a thing of the past.
Has the lack of unstructured play led to a decline in skill?
The joy of “pick-up” is that there’s no one telling you what to do, you have to figure out how to win against your friends, FULL FREEDOM.
What has dropped in the recent generation is that of “pick-up” lacrosse, it has disappeared and now the trend is to train skills, get your “reps” in and to practice doing a movement or technical work against air.
The game itself is the greatest teacher of all. How?
Because, in live action lacrosse, we have to make decisions, and by making decisions, good or bad, we get better at making them.
In a “pick-up” environment, the player is self-led, constantly subconsciously or consciously evaluating their game, being self-autonomous and self-directed.
We have lost this feature largely in the development of the lacrosse player.
And maybe today we are being too overbearing, and we lose a bit of that freedom, that creativity, that intrapersonal relationship in training that happens in a Free Play environment.
It would seem that adaptable players are needed now more than ever.
The question I pose is, has this linear standardizing of player development in lacrosse, coupled with the decline in Play, made our players less effective?
Have we gone too far away from an unstructured environment in player development that we’ve lost development of key intangibles that are must-haves for world-class players?
To be continued..
Jimmy Bitter.
To all my fellow water-bug players. 2:45.. ;)
Developing the skill of decision-making.
The development of decision making is a messy, and noisy non-linear process which requires lots of exploration to develop.
The key to developing better decision making skills is presenting relevant constraints during the three developmental phases of decision making.
Stage 1: Exploration. The first step of the learning process is the education of intention, this initiates the process of exploring degrees of freedom. Different intentions will organise perceptual-motor systems differently. The education of intention will have a big influence on what affordances are perceived by the performer. Through exploration the performers can learn what information is specifying for a specific intention.
Stage 2: Stabilizing. The performer starts to recognise the conditions when certain information is more useful or not. This process is known as the education of attention or perceptual attunement. This starts to open up new action possibilities for the player. Stabilising solutions, exploring the limits of these solutions and becoming more perceptually attuned are characteristics of this phase.
Stage 3: Exploiting. The exploitation of both perceptual and motor degrees of freedom allows them to functionally adapt their actions to achieve the task goal consistently. Calibration is a key feature of this stage. Calibration is the “scaling of the perceptual motor system to information”. When body dimensions and action capabilities change some actions that were possible become impossible and some that were impossible become possible. Calibration and recalibration are necessary to regulate the emergent actions.
Much credit to the following resource: The Development of Decision Making Skill in Sport: An Ecological Dynamics Perspective (Araujo et al., 2009)
The Free Game
The part of lacrosse that is played with the mind.
What will be covered are the 8 Principles of Performance.
Any lacrosse player can own the 1st ever sport psychology methodology specific to the game of Lacrosse.
This purchase will include a FREE consultation with Coach McDonnell via in-person or Zoom.
Here is a preview.
The cost is $24.99
You can purchase The Free Game here.
Lean in, do the work, stay focused and become uncommon.
Have a great week.