THE SKILL-PERFORMANCE RELATIONSHIP STUDY PART 1

                                    

These notes come from a 30-page long study titled "A Theory on the Skill-Performance Relationship" and looks at how skill and performance are entwined in various parts of life, but I'll keep it sports-related.

Part 1 today and part 2 tomorrow or Friday - strap in!

• It can be examined at the technical, behavioral, psychological and neurological levels
• Skill affects performance and performance in turn defines/affects skill
• Successful performers are successful not just because of their skills but because they take advantage of their skills by creating more occurrences of momentum, making them last longer and using them to bounce back faster from streaks of unsuccessful performance
• The variability of skill’s effect on performance becomes clear when considering the difference between skill possession and skill execution
• The possession of a certain level of skill does not automatically lead to invariant performance at that level because skill execution fluctuates as a function of how well/poorly individuals are able to use their skills during performance
• To better understand the skill-performance relationship, you need not only examine the effects of skill on performance but also the main determinants of skill (ability x effort in practice)
• Ability is the the innate capacity to understand/learn information from acquiring physical/cognitive skills as to acquire complex motor skills,you require a capacity to coordinate bodyparts/implements used in performance such as golfers being able coordinating their upper/lower segments for a smooth swing
• Skills are learned, acquired physically/mentally tools or qualities to execute certain actions required for successful motor/cognitive performance in specific domains – a learned ability to perform at a specific level from acquiring the necessary mental/physical know-how for doing so such as a golfer learning to hit iron clubs down into the ground to get the ball up in the air and for this to be a skill, you must be able to do it consistently
• A skillful golfer not only gets the ball up in the air almost every time but has also learned to regulate the ball’s flight trajectory on demand
• Effort is the employment of personal resources for practicing/improving skills via frequency, duration and intensity
• Performance is objectively/subjectively measuring performance in cognitive/physical tasks
• A golf handicap is a good example of the intersection where skill, ability,effort and performance all meet
• High ability individuals are more likely to benefit from personalised coaching/tutoring than those with lower abilities
• The best performers not only benefit from initially higher performance, but their rate of improvement is faster
• Ability limits the effects of effort/practice on skills where more practice in music does not correlate with better music skills/performance, suggesting a relative lack of musical talent restricts the beneficial effect of practice
• It is more difficult to compensate for a relative lack of ability in certain activities although there can be some compensation from added work but the theory of the path of least resistance suggests that people are less likely to engage in hard work when the required effort increases
• In addition to technical knowledge/physical skills in cognitive/motor areas of performance, mental skills are also required for best performance
• You need a model that assesses the contributions of ability/effort to the over skill/performance in both absolute and relative terms
• A golf score cannot be used as a proxy for skill as both need to be assessed individually
• Cognitive/physical abilities + psychological/physical effort = skill
• Working memory is an integral part of skill/performance in most cognitive/physical tasks as it enhances action-perception skills
• The positive effect of working memory on performance is diminished if a performer has not acquired requisite knowledge/actions (skills) through practice to deal with such interfering factors such as cognitive load
• The 4 cornerstones of skill-performance are neural functioning/nonconscious processing + behavioral execution + mental-social factors/conscious processing + ability/know how and skill performance is the result of all of them synergistically coming together
• A piano player must have the ability to play the music on their own but that doesn’t guarantee successful execution in front of friends or 1000’s of listeners which also depends on conscious processing of relevant mental (concentration) and social (audience presence) factors
• In cognitive/motor tasks, both technique possession for skills (the amount of relative knowledge possessed) and behavioral execution of skills are needed for the best performance
• In math tasks a person is more likely to be successful if they have a large repertoire of knowledge of relevant/basic math operations as well as an ability to think mathematically using their acquired knowledge
• In golf you need the knowledge of how to execute certain technical shots as well as the behavioral skill of how to use this technical knowledge in-game
• High performers have better technical, tactical and procedural knowledge then lesser skilled performers
• Performance variance (between individuals) is caused by a lack of proper technical knowledge, incorrect technical practice and failed execution of skill
• Unmastered skill leads to a more variable performance and worse outcomes
• Performers must also have the ability to retrieve the necessary knowledge from their long and short term memory storage
• The planning of a motor movement in the mind consists of retrieving a motor plan from the memory which has a signature similar to the actual execution of the plan
• If performance is not frequent enough then knowledge decays and the retrieval of critical information slows down with it and the skill then becomes fragile/variable and hard to reproduce at a high level

4 OPTIONS TRAINING ACTIVITY

This is a kicking and decision making training activity that also trains various patterns of play and being another option if you get ignored initially.

I'll post the level 1 layer of this in the video below and then give you some extra options to layer this with below it. 

For full access to this training activity, register for a level 3 membership from https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

ESSENDON DEFENSE, WEST COAST GETTING LENGTH, SYDNEY GOING INSIDE FORWARD 50

3 clips of vision from this week's round.

1 - Essendon showing their defensive chops - who would have thought?

2 - West Coast getting ultra-speed on the ball and the ensuing length as well

3 - Sydney 2-man forward 50 play for mark 15m from goal

For full access to these clips, register for a level 1 membership from https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

1 LINERS FROM MY RESEARCH FILES - TEACHING

                                                     

The first 5 parts of this series has covered youth development, learning, coaching, club culture and gameday, and today we look at 52 1 liners relating to teaching.

1. Correct/Incorrect/Correct Model (John Wooden) – show the correct technique then show what the athlete did and how it was wrong and then show the correct technique again
2. Integrate/Isolate/Integrate (Lee Taft) – integrating 1st allows you to know what might need isolating later
3. Harold Gibbons – it’s not about perfect movement but about providing the organism with as many ways as possible to safely complete a task in any given situation
4. Positive Feedback (John Brandon) – neurons/synaptic connections actually grow/develop in area’s where we have the strongest brain activity so for someone really smart running data analytics and pointing out their poor people skills is giving feedback in the worst way possible so instead point out their strengths and give positive feedback
5. Coaching/Teaching (Steve Magness) – is not about prescribing/dictating but about creating situations where the athlete is challenged to figure it out and as the coach you can nudge them along but if you always give them the answer then you aren’t actually teaching and they aren’t learning

For all 52 1-liners, register for a level 1 membership from https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/. 

SYDNEY DEFENDING KICK OUT + CREATING/UTILISING AN OUTNUMBER

                                          

Here we have another couple of clips from the weekend, focusing on my beloved Sydney Swans.

Clip 1 looks at Sydney defending an opposition kick in (we looked at Collingwood doing the same yesterday) where they read the Gold Coast kick in and get numbers to that side.

Clip 2 looks at Sydney not only creating an outnumber but then having the shared mental models to utilise it for a deep forward 50 entry.

For full access to these 2 game clips, and many others, then register for a level 1 membership from https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

COLLINGWOOD DEFENDING A KICK OUT + SYDNEY STOPPAGE SET UP

Here are 2 short clips from last week's round of AFL.

In clip 1 I look at Collingwood defending kick outs of which I've looked at numerous times in the last couple of seasons.

In clip 2 I look at a set up Sydney used in the early stages of their game to take away anything Gold Coast wanted to do post-clearance.

I'll post another couple of clips tomorrow too...

For full access to these 2 game clips, register for a level 1 membership from https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

COGNITIVE LOAD THEORY

                                       

These notes come from a piece posted over at Inner Drive, a student learning research-based company from the UK, explaining the ins and outs of cognitive load theory.

At its core, CTL emphasises the fact that our working memory has a very small capacity so if new information isn't transferred to long term memory (which has infinite space), then it will usually be forgotten and what you see, or what you think you're seeing at training, is not transferred to games where it actually counts. 

The rate of transfer can also be decreased if there is to much information being presented all at once, which results in cognitive overload which is already sky-high in games without any extra load being put on top of it via you're coaching methods.

Here are 10 ways to teach that take cognitive load theory into account for better learning and transfer.

#1 - WORKED EXAMPLES

When students are relatively new to a topic, all their attention goes to solving the problem but then they often don't remember how they did it so step-by-step demonstrations can help this

#2 - COMPLETION TASKS

Design partially completed examples with gaps to fill in that should get progressively harder

#3 – SPLIT ATTENTION EFFECT

Give them multiple sources of information simultaneously so they have to switch between different formats (written + diagram in the same graphic) which can create cognitive overload but you can minimise that by combining the information via integrated diagrams (results in 22% higher marks on average)

#4 – MODALITY EFFECT

Diagram + integrated text can still create cognitive overload as the learner has to process both types of information using the same visual store so use 2 different formats such as a diagram with the words on it and also read it out aloud which allows them to process the visual information separately from the auditory info, reducing risk of cognitive overload

#5 – REDUNDANCY EFFECT

Giving them irrelevant information just clogs up working memory so avoid that by giving them time to read it themselves, instead of saying it to them as people read and hear at different speeds

#6 – IMAGINATION EFFECT

For more experienced learners, give them a set of instructions and then ask them to imagine the process they need to solve the problem e.g. if the question refers to reading a graph to answer then they would first imagine how they would read the graph and what information they would need to take away from it and only then would they go about actually solving the problem which forms mental representations in the brain which helps interpret the worked around us as imagining instructions allows students to automate these schemas which therefore causes less processing in the working memory

#7 – ISOLATED INTERACTING ELEMENTS EFFECT

Some complex tasks require simultaneously processing many interacting elements before they can understand it and if the number of elements exceed working memory capacity, then learning may not take place so process some elements in an isolated way then bring them together

#8 – EXPERTISE REVERSAL EFFECT

This has to do with the amount of prior knowledge someone has, where support/instruction is useful for beginners but can have negative implications on experienced students who need to be met at their challenge point

#9 – GUIDANCE FADING EFFECT

Refers to reducing the amount of guidance you give as they gain more knowledge and also ensuring that you're meeting them at their challenge point which helps avoid the reversal effect via worked examples into completion tasks into solving the full problem

#10 – GOAL-FREE EFFECT

With an example being to calculate as many angles as you can v a specific goal by calculating a specific angle, this requires students to focus on the information they have and requires more problem solving skills and the type of wording used here requires low levels of cognitive load and helps facilitate learning