- The development of shared/complementary knowledge (mental models) allows team members to do the right thing (know-what) at the right time (know-when) and for the right reason (know-why). Which of these do cone to cone drills focus on ya reckon?
- Game situations differ all the time and decision making in context of play is highly constrained by time more than anything else. Does your training reflect this?
- Players with more knowledge are using less cognitive effort to make their decisions and are also better placed to learn new things through the game, meaning their ability to make better decisions also helps their ability to accumulate new knowledge and that helps them play better. Is all training created equal and does this entice you to maybe break up into training groups?
- In team sport players are required to manage 2 fonts of information at the same time – the coaches instructions and the play in front of them - which may help self-organisation and to co-adapt to perform together in play, but all this information processing occurs too slowly to get away with in games. How much information are you giving players to try and decipher during training and does the activity design fot their capabilities?
- Tactical decisions are cognition rich as they embody content such as intentions, perceptions and judgement.
- To be consequent to the particularities of decision making in the context of play, actions in that context must be explored featuring a minimal complexity from early stages of learning, which will help players insert their actions in the play even if they don’t know how to do them yet. Different players, depending on where they are currently situated in the game intelligence continuum, will perform different acts within the same drill regardless of if you want them to or not (don't run there, run here!).
- Context fulfills an important role as it defines whether the player can afford to perform in the specific context of play given their competencies and not only does the game itself shape the way players decide in the play, but it also conditions how they learn to play, and how they behave in a response to new situations.
- Providing situations of play that will offer the right opportunities for the right content is a prerequisite of learning, even before teaching, and these conditions will also favour learning as it emphasises content although this context alone will not make learning automatic as the player will still have to challenge their skills to learn new contents. Things will look messy before they look pretty, if they even reach that point.
- To transfer learnings to actions mainly depends on the actual opportunities arising in play and under inappropriate conditions of play players confronted with the obligation to deliver an immediate/efficient outcome in the play, will limit themselves to actions that can be judged as safe but not aligned with the content to learn and they’ll fail to explore new solutions and thus fail to learn new content. Provide psychological safety for all training activities and games.
- For small sided games, in addition to coherent conditions, the teaching approach should emphasise that the lessons that have to be pulled out of the play from the situations/problems will help the player take ownership of the content that can help them make better decisions.
- Games should be designed which prevents the excess of information that comes from the coach (too many triggers).
- Be sure to add reviewing type activities like questioning/thinking exercises to help construct knowledge and are important to learn/perform new content. Don't be in a rush to get through this bit either not thinking you're being effective because there isn't any percieved "work" being performed.
