NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES: KNOWLEDGE OF OPPOSITION + DECLARATIVE KNOWLEDGE + ELITE v AMATEURS

                                        

No new terms today.

KNOWLEDGE OF OPPOSITION

• Knowledge of the opposition's tactical and individual tendencies can also guide perceptual strategies to make effective decisions during fast and slow thought
• Being consciously aware of movement tendencies can be detrimental to anticipatory performance as you are looking for specific information only and ignoring other information that could be of use
• The knowledge of opposition is made in game situations where players had sufficient time to make decisions such as a line out or scrum game action
• Develop knowledge of opposition tactical tendencies to inform player decision making

DECLARATIVE KNOWLEDGE

• Declarative knowledge is not dependent of complexity or competition level suggesting a dissociation existing between player’s declarative knowledge and knowledge in action, which is why inaccuracies in both groups exist when assessing situational probability of game situations
• Players recognise legitimate risks and threats to offensive and defensive integrity within fast and slow thought actions but elites make sense of game information to make decisions in 2 steps being an assessment of the situation, and the anticipation of situations as they develop to manage risk
• There’s a clear relationship between a player’s sense-making and decision making as knowledge of the game seems to guide their perceptual assessment of the situation
• Identifying risks and threats coincide with sudden perceptual acknowledgement of an opponent’s capability to disrupt momentum, often in fast paced situations that disrupt a players situation probability, such as when an opposition player does something totally unexpected and random

ELITE v AMATEUR

• Elite’s often make decisions based on the current momentum, especially in those moments where they felt levels of situational favourableness and the game felt completely in their control v amateurs who only reference game context in times of heavy panic
• Offensive and defensive momentum is used by elite’s to make informed assessments of risk associated within their decision making
• Game situations impact the elite and amateur players decision making process in similar ways

NEXT POST - DO THIS

NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES: DEFENSE/OFFENSE + GLOBAL/DISCRETE GAME INFORMATION

                                                         

No new terms today.

DEFENSE/OFFENSE

• Defensive situations involved tactical rules that often dictated players roles and responsibilities but they can also be consciously aware of too much game information at once and become frozen via paralysis by analysis, as tactical rules can drive players to focus less on perceptual information provided by opposition and more on rules associated with their own movement behavior
• Offensive situations refer to a framework of play that drives positioning and intentions with slow thought with mostly being tactical plays with no and fast thought decisions coinciding with moments where player’s initial assessment of situational probability was unsatisfied, resulting in a need to reassess or react to game information
• Defensively both groups wait for 1 opposition movement to finish before perceiving the next one resulting in missed tackles, as their decision to perceive the 2^nd attacker has come too late

GLOBAL/DISCRETE GAME INFORMATION

• Players perceive game information on a global scale such as the width of the defensive line, identifying space in the backfield or identifying advantages or disadvantages between offensive and defensive numbers, as pictures that invite courses of action
• Skilled players perceive globally and lesser skilled players more locally and discrete but both make reference to their oppositions body positions and movements as well as their teammates movements as actuators of the decision making process
• The perception of global or discrete information seems dependent on the situational context on the decision maker
• The perception of global information coincides with moments of tactical team play with slow thought
• The perception of discrete information coincides with moments of 1v1 play with fast thought

NEXT POST - KNOWLEDGE OF OPPOSITION + DECLARATIVE KNOWLEDGE

NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES: THOUGHT CLASSIFICATION (3/3)

                                     

No new terms today.

• Look at specific game moments in regards to no, fast and slow thought decisions in rugby such as a scrum for example which is slow thought where players referred to a checklist in response to game information formed from knowledge of the game, and what action is appropriate for where and how you’re positioned but also shared language that helps initiates how you intend to approach the scrum
• No thought implies that players often refer to having no time to perceive game information whilst during slow thought both groups allude to having increased time that provides an opportunity to view a global array of visual perceptual information, backing up that perception is task dependent as amateur player verbal descriptions change in line with different game situations
• Player’s in the immediate contest have minimal time to perceive and act on game information where a psychological refractory period may occur where players are unable to perceive a secondary source of game information so players must rely on the initial perception of discrete information in the local array, such as opposition movements and body positions
• Player’s just off the immediate contest are given time to perceive a global array of offensive and defensive pictures offered by their opposition, to communicate and collectively execute a decision for the next phase of play
• Within unsimulated fast and slow thought decisions, players were consciously aware of their physical and technical capabilities compared to no thought decisions where they weren’t, and thus relied on self-organisational responses which still resulted in positive outcomes most of the time
• For most no thought actions, players could not remember how or why they did what they did, simply reacting without thinking which may suggest that within these moments, the driving mechanism of decision making is a successful, or unsuccessful, forming of a direct online relationship between game information and their own technical and physical capabilities without the need for memory representation
• Player decision making was mostly fast thought where a player’s initial assessments of the game were inaccurate and they had to respond with a rapid ability to make sense of game information and a heightened capability to satisfy the situation by taking the 1^st option available to them
• No thought decisions occasionally presented evidence of subconscious decision making made through feel and reaction, showing a direct relationship between perception and action, where players self-organise their behavior implicitly in response to game information without the need for memory representations, and also providing evidence for neural embodiments of meaning, where representations are formed from a network of information

NEXT POST - DEFENSE/OFFENSE

BLACK FRIDAY SALE

                                                             

It's Black Friday time again and as a past sign up of the ART free membership, you are being offered better deals than what will be offered to the public later today.

OFFER #1

Full access to levels 1, 2 and 3 for 12 months starting from September this year as I start a new year with new ideas picked up from the previous year and a lot of what I'm covering currently was introduced when season 2021 finished up.

This is ideal for both players and coaches of all levels, grades, abilities and genders.

A 12 month subscription is $204 but you have between now and Monday to pick it up at 30% off for just $145.

OFFER #2

The footy club bundle consists of programs that are not part of any of the membership levels and can only be accessed through their individual purchase with a full post dedicated to what's in it here.

This is aimed at all coaching panels at football clubs, something that can be utilised by any coach at any age group and is encouraged to be purchased by clubs for club use first and foremost, but also certainly by individual coaches and players. 

 

The Footy Club Bundle usually sells for $250 but, you can get it at 30% off for just $175.

Head to the register page and click on the BLACK FRIDAY option you prefer and take season 2022 to whole 'nother level.

This offer will end on Monday so take advantage while you can and if you have any questions please reach out.

NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES: THOUGHT CLASSIFICATION (2/3)

                                            

No new terms again today.

• Within slow thought decisions most player actions for the game tended to be dependent on intentions derived from knowledge of the game and what action was appropriate at that time
• No thought decision verbalisations referred exclusively to player’s unconscious reaction to perceptual information whilst individual player’s made reference to the importance of rehearsal
• Interpretations of fast thought data suggests that player’s intentions, shaped by their perception of information, guided resultant action in time pressured situations
• Slow thought classifications indicated that action for the game depends on player’s self awareness, intentions and also an awareness of their teammates action capabilities
• Slow thought decisions referred to consciously using knowledge of their opposition’s roles, responsibilities, self awareness and tactics (what the opposition can do) and also their teammates, whilst making decisions
• Most slow thought decisions regard players knowledge of the game and make reference to the importance of executing specific roles and responsibilities that are essential within particular game situations such as a defensive sweeper at clearance, perceiving action base on their tactical approach to the game
• Slow thought responses indicate that when players had time they often referred to their knowledge of the game tactics, roles and responsibilities as navigators of perceptual search and choice of action, with elite players extending to knowledge of their opposition tendencies, tactics and behavior
• Slow thought decisions required having to update their knowledge in the game less often during slow thought decision making but when they did, it was because of a changing of expectations, game context and realistic threats and risks to offensive or defensive integrity
• Fast thought decisions referred to the use of tactical rules to come to decisions within fast thought (numbering off, creating outnumbers, 3^rd man up, loose defender, intercept marker etc) and tend to coincide with the use of shared terminology between coaches and teammates
• Slow thought decisions showed the clear role of verbal and non-verbal communication between players when making decisions and they were coded into a shared common language, general communication between teammates and tactical rules, with all of them influencing team and individual decision making by guiding perception to more relevant game information but also information that the player can’t perceive visually

NEXT POST - THOUGHT CLASSIFICATION 3/3

NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES: THOUGHT CLASSIFICATION (1/3)

                                         

No new terms today!

• Gain verbal data from players where they classify decision making as no thought/implicit, fast thought/knowledge in the game or slow thought/knowledge of the game
• Before going through video, ask the players to verbalise their involvements, actions and decision making within the game based off their own memory
• Player’s were shown individual clips in the order they occurred during the game just once and then paused at the end of each clip where they have 5secs to give a no, fast, slow thought grading of what they did
• Show them the same clips again but in a different order and have them grade them again but without the 5sec grading time limit but now have to verbalise how they came to their decision with the interviewer using prompts such as "Why no thought? What were you thinking? What information are you responding to? Talk me through what happened."
• Both groups of players (amateur and elite) referenced their actions for the game most often followed by perception of information and a common frame of reference
• Knowledge of the game and knowledge in the game were referenced least often
• Unsimulated verbalisations, when players simply recall the game from their own memory, demonstrates players being able to recall and verbalise their decisions and thought process leading to a decision, and players often recall decisions that are classed as fast or slow thought actions but rarely no thought
• During no thought decision verbalisations, players recalled perceiving discrete information due to a lack of time to see, hear or feel anything else
• During fast thought decision verbalisations, players referred to the perception of discrete sources of information such as opposition movements and body positions and also global information such as opposition formation/s
• Slow thought decision verbalisations indicated that an increase in the time offered by particular game situations that resulted in a tendency to focus on global information such as opposition formations on defense and offense
• Actions for the game are no thought actions where players are simply reacting unconsciously to game information through their actions
• During fast thought decisions, players already have knowledge of their intentions to achieve a specific outcome
• During slow thought decisions, players often recounted clear thought processes during decision making irrespective of it being successful or not

NEXT POST - THOUGHT CLASSIFICATION 2/3

NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES: KNOWLEDGE OF/IN THE GAME

                                        

NEW TERMS

Knowledge of Opposition - refers to the knowledge of opposition team/player tactical, physical movements and positions

• Knowledge of the game connects the search for game information and selection of a relevant capability to act together through deeper understanding of why specific decisions are more appropriate in 1 scenario than another, and is attributed to the development over time of task-specific declarative knowledge stored as verbal and visual memory representations
• Players are required to update their knowledge in the game in order to adapt to changes in expectations such as when new information arises or the opposition behaves differently than predicted
• Knowledge of the game is a fast thought action and refers to knowledge of the opposition, roles, responsibilities, self awareness and tactics but is also referred to as self awareness and knowledge of teammates and what each can do, when coming to fast thought decisions
• Knowledge in the game is also a fast thought action and refers to their knowledge in the game during fast thought decisions but changes in expectations of game situations required the ability to quickly adapt and then game context can also push expectations further away if it’s chaotic and high pressure
• No references were made to knowledge of the game of knowledge in the game during no thought actions and knowledge of the game only referenced sparingly during fast thought actions
• Knowledge of the game is mostly recounted during slow thought decision making where players are presented with more time and an increased number of options to select from, and within these instances player’s share how their knowledge of opposition, tactical, roles and responsibilities, self awareness and teammates all influenced their decision making process
• Elementary units of meaning comprised from player’s knowledge of the game all relate to the successful execution of pre-planned intentions for performance
• References to knowledge in the game were made predominantly during fast thought actions with players describing that they tend to form expectations of what will happen based on their assessment of game information showing that players attempt to make sense of game information and engage in an assessment of situational probability to successfully anticipate an outcome but they can often be inaccurate when calculating situational probability from their assessments of game information so players need to constantly update their perception of the situation as game information is altered before them, where the current information is deemed unfamiliar and thus there’s a need to process the available information in relation to formed representations to generate an appropriate response
• In most of these cases players simply take the 1^st viable option presented to them to quickly satisfy the situation and to remove risk
• Lower tier teams and players update and adapt to game incidents more often than elite level, mostly from an over-reliance on tactical intentions where elites have increased perceptual capability to form accurate assessments of situational probabilities

NEXT POST - THOUGHT CLASSIFICATIONS

NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES – PLAYER/TEAM PERCEPTION (PART 4/4)

                                       

NEW TERMS

Explicit Knowledge - guided learning

• The application of decision making processes at an individual level may depend on the cognitive complexity of different game situations and those who have developed explicit knowledge of the task are advantageous when cognitive complexity is high whereas those who have developed actions for the game rather than knowledge of the task (implicit learning), were advantageous when cognitive complexity was low
• Players can become blind via an over-reliance on a specific memory representation that dictated their behavior rather than behaving in response to game perception
• Player’s perception of game information is mostly dependent on the task and game situation and when players had time, they looked at global information but when time wasn’t available their perception of information was more discrete
• Memory representations is the connection between the perceptual search for information and an ideal action response and thus, players form plans of action in regard to what to look for, hear or feel
• If the initial assessment of situational probability was accurate then players described having time to consider options to come to an appropriate decision
• Representations still drive what the players need to achieve in the decision making process but these were rare and coincided with moments where players had a split second to react to game information but if players are required to update, diagnose or self-organise to game information, then these incidents must be accounted for in representative training environments
• Player’s perspective must be considered when seeking to understand cognitive mechanisms and decision making processes through a no, fast and slow though grading system
• Whether it be implicit, explicit or through the presence/absence of cognitive mechanisms, player decision making occurs relative to its environment within a game situation
• Player’s individual and collective perceptual strategies, retrieval of memory representations, actions and use of language are consistently underpinned by players deep declarative knowledge of the game, and by supporting player’s game intelligence and a deeper understanding of why, coaches can support players development of self awareness, meta cognitive strategies, realistic evaluations of their performance, valid assessments of their own technical and physical capabilities and the ability to consider game context during performance to make informed decisions

NEXT POST - KNOWLEDGE OF / IN THE GAME

NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES – PLAYER/TEAM PERCEPTION (PART 3/4)

                                  

NEW TERMS

Meta Cognition - knowing how you know what you know

• Player’s actions are often driven by situation specific intentions but they are determined by a player’s deep declarative and procedural understanding of what, how and why to act on given game information which challenges the view that coupling a player’s perception and action are bound directly and that perception, whilst coupled and refined with salient game information, is often predicated by the retrieval of conscious memory representations that initiate what action is selected and why
• Player’s are self aware of their technical and physical capabilities during the decision making process and tend to engage in meta-cognitive processes in fast paced game situations where players consciously assess whether they possess the technical and physical capability to influence the outcome positively
• “Perceive to act and act to perceive” must be extended to account for the interceding mechanism of memory representation meaning that in order to perceive to act and act to perceive (bottom up), one must possess the knowledge of when, where an why to perceive and act accordingly (top down)
• In time rich situations, memory representations, stored as task specific declarative knowledge, are the key connecting variable between the perception of game information and the decision to act in a certain way so when players do have time, their search for game information followed by their selection of a relevant capability to act, are both guided by knowledge of their teams tactical approach, presenting clear evidence that players store and use memory representations to perceive, interpret and act on tactical roles and responsibilities successfully
• Improved memory representations allow players to form suitable plans of action through tactical roles and responsibilities which enhance their capability to effectively perceive and operate in dynamic game environments
• Such plans of action guide perceptual strategies, the retrieval of memory representations and subsequent action such knowing when, where, why to kick the ball up field in order to relieve defensive pressure
• When humans need to make high pressured decisions they tend to do so based on heuristics which is what has worked before
• When player’s perceive legitimate risks and threats they often use deeper declarative knowledge of the game to update their knowledge in the game as they take the 1^st option that presented itself
• The score, players involved, match difficulty, emotional status an external instruction all influence the decision making process

NEXT POST - PLAYER/TEAM PERCEPTION 4/4

Remember - feedback/comments are most welcome.

NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES – PLAYER/TEAM PERCEPTION (PART 2/4)

                                       

NEW TERMS

Self Organisation - refers to how a player organises their movements and actions within a disorgainised situation, with this ability enhanced with increasing exposures to the same or similar scenarios

Implicit Coupling - unguided perception/action coupling

Heuristic Decision Making - what has worked before

Fast Thought - game decisions and actions made with some in-the-game information but mostly with of-the-game information

Haptic Information - the understanding of information through the sense of touch

• The application of decision making processes at an individual level may depend on the demands of different game moments
• Specific game situations may demand a player’s use of meaningful cognitive mechanisms to make decisions such as the time and options offered to players by game situations that may demand an implicit coupling of perception and action resulting in self organisation, intuition and heuristic driven decision making, the diagnosis of limited options rapidly, the deliberate evaluation of situational probability and the mental rehearsal of possible courses of action
• At times, rehearsal of actions allow players to act accordingly where the game model expectations are that player/s will be in a specific position at a specific time without even needing to look
• Players form expectations of situations from their perception of the game situation and their knowledge of the game but expectations are frequently unmet so players tended to take the 1^st option available to them which is evident in fast thought decision making where knowledge in the game is referred to consistently
• Player perceptual sources include presenting visual, verbal and haptic information whose use is predicted on the positions they play and the game situation and whilst most decisions within open play are actuated by global and discrete visual information, players also perceive verbal information from teammates, especially in the backline
• In scrums players mostly refer on the perception of haptic information to make decisions such as the conscious awareness of the strength of their physical scrimmaging position and the bind between themselves, their teammates and the opposition, actuating their decision making process
• Player’s perception of information is guided by their physical and technical capability to act
• Despite players indicating that they had decided on feel and through reaction, they often impressed wider knowledge of what was required to satisfy the situation which can show evidence for a direct and enactive relationship between perception and action within the decision making process and that even in situations where players are denied access to conscious thought, neural embodiments of meaning stored as representations allow for players to satisfy the demands of the game situation, also suggesting players had an instinct of what was the right  thing to do given the game situation

NEXT POST - PLAYER/TEAM PERCEPTION (3/4)

NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES – PLAYER/TEAM PERCEPTION (PART 1/4)

                                   

NEW TERMS

Actions for the Game - reacting unconsciously to game information through your actions

Implicit Learning - unguided learning

Knowledge of the Task - what tactical, technical an physical tasks make up the action required for specific parts of the game

• Decision making is initiated by the perception of the game
• Rules create context specific game information that individual players are to act on to attain the ultimate goal of scoring or restricting scoring
• Rules constrain players from simply choosing from an infinite list of actions
• Through interactions of the game, decision making of the player is governed through task dependent perception of information where a player's visual fixation and mental descriptions change in line with changes in task demands, as they search for a means to a successful outcome
• Expert players demonstrate an improved connection to the ability offered by the performance environment over time
• Player’s perception of game information is linked with an individual and collective capability to act, more specifically player’s actions for the game, knowledge of the game and knowledge in the game
• Actions for the game are shaped by a players individual physical and technical attributes
• With experience, game information and a players relevant capabilities become coupled and refined as a greater understanding of action capabilities which more effectively guides the player to more highly salient game information
• Decision making in team invasion sports sits on a continuum between direct perception and a process of analysis and execution, with memory acting as a mediator between that perception and analysis
• Human synaptic processes required for decision making processes may be too slow to deal with the actual speed of game situations
• Even when situations remove the possibility for conscious thought, representations create neural embodiments of meaning that allow humans to satisfy a situation meaning even when players rely on intuition and non-conscious decision making and when the time to analyse is absent, networks of neurons fire in a synchronised fashion through mental representations that are deemed meaningful over time, providing evidence that meaningful representations stored in memory are the central mechanism for effective decision making
• Novice players with developed knowledge of the task are advantaged when cognitive complexity is high compared to those who have developed actions for the game rather than knowledge of the task (implicit learning etc) were advantageous when cognitive complexity was low

NEXT POST - PLAYER/TEAM PERCEPTION (PART 2/4)

NEXT LEVEL COACHING - DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES - COMMON FRAME OF REFERENCE

NEW TERMS

Bottom Up Process - where you’ve already been

Common Frame of Reference - refers to a team game model, shared common language etc

Self Organisation - is the ability to create order out of the randomness of team sports via tactical and technical movement strategies

No Thought - are game decisions and actions made with zero to limited information processing time

• Developing a communal language/unified conceptual framework for player decision making in invasion sports breaks up decision making into 3 categories being the game, the player and the coach, with none of them being mutually exclusive as they are constantly interacting with each other
• The game sits in the middle as the goal and rules of the game interact to create problems that both players and coach need to solve
• Players interact directly with the game and the coach by performing share solutions to the problems the game presents
• The coach acts as a central agent in (co)creating, sharing and developing a view of the game with players through on and off-field planning via their delivery of coaching
• The coach is responsible for creating a common frame of reference to facilitate the collective response of their players to the game
• The coordination of team play is often a product of a global top-down shared mental model and the local bottom-up self-organisation of players through shared perception and responses to game information, which the coach can influence by developing their players capabilities
• Common frame of reference is a no thought action referring to common language and tactical rules that initiate action without conscious thought
• Common frame of reference is used frequently within slow thought actions in the form of a game model, shared language, instructional and positional talk, with shared language being the key to upholding your game model and tactical framework
• Shared language not only guides player perceptions but also initiates their decisions and actions in an intentional pre-planned fashion, and thus the deep declarative understanding of a shared common language between players connects their perception of information to their individual and collective actions for the game, knowledge of the game and knowledge in the game
• Coaches should create shared mental models with shared affordances as they are both dependent on a deep declarative understanding of teammates capabilities and your teams shared common language, suggesting coaches should imprint strategy WITH their players, which will guide attention to perceived affordances
• Shared affordances are a likely a by-product of tactical shared mental models and within key moments players used tactical rules, housed with common terms, that can be beneficial but also detrimental to decision making performance
• Shared common language coordinates perception and action via communicating

NEXT POST - DECISION AN TEAM/PLAYER PERCEPTION
 

NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES: COGNITIVE MECHANISM

                                       

NEW TERMS

Top Down Process - where you're aiming to go

Knowledge in the Game - knowledge based on past experiences and expectations combined with information in that game moment

• There are 3 distinct views that offer different interpretations of the role of cognitive mechanisms within a player’s decision making process and they center on the presence or absence of memory representations that facilitate the selection of a course of action
• The information processing view is that decisions are made through a deliberate and conscious interaction with memory representations which have been formed over time
• The ecological view is that decision making process occurs through a direct connection between player and environment without memory representation
• The naturalistic decision making view is that conscious recourse to memory representations is dependent on the familiarity of the information presented to the decision maker, where more familiar situations reduce reference to memory representations
• These different viewpoints are usually explained in different ways with different language, causing inconsistency in the implementation of these views from coaches across all levels of sport
• It’s important to understand what cognitive mechanisms to facilitate, when, where and why
• All game moments within team sports possess a level of cognitive complexity which is defined by the amount of choices, attributes and/or time available within a decision making moment
• At a collective team level, situations of high cognitive complexity may benefit from reference to a global top-down shared mental model whilst situations of low cognitive complexity may be best to rest on the local bottom-up shared perception of, and response to, game information by team members
• By perfecting technique it can free up cognitive resources by taking conscious thought of technique out of the equation allowing more cognitive resources for decision making
• Cognitive mechanisms were varied but most players were cognitively driven by memory representations stored as knowledge of the game and knowledge in the game

Next Post - Common Frame of Reference

NEXT LEVEL COACHING - DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES: TIME

                                       

As mentioned in the introduction to this book-long post series, today is part 1 of about 18 looking at decision making within games, today looking at time.

NEW TERMS

Declarative Knowledge of the Game - facts or information of the game in general stored in long term memory

Perception and Action - refers reacting the actions of those around you

Cognitive Complexity - is defined by the amount of choices, attributes and time available within a decision making moment

Global Information - the scanning and perception of larger playing area's such as opposition defensive set up behind the ball

Shared Common Language - terms used by every member of your team that allows for fast and simple verbal communication and instruction

Discrete Information - the scanning and perception of immediate surroundings such as player positioning an movements 

• As time increases players are more likely to engage with task specific declarative knowledge of the game which are stored as mental representations
• As time diminishes players tend to diagnose and/or update their knowledge in the game in a rapid fashion
• Occasionally, when players have no time they react on instinct through a direct connection between perception and action
• Player’s regard time as the key variable for the application of decision making processes over that of cognitive complexity such as line outs and scrums
• Open phase play offers more time to make decisions and within these moments player’s use global information via defensive pictures and shared common language which actuates the coordinated execution of tactical rules as well as the roles and responsibilities for all players involved
• With limited time, such as dealing with a threat during a breakdown, players perceive discrete information (opposition body position etc) and tend to take the 1^st option presented to them
• Player’s errors in judgement tended to materialise when a misalignment occurs between the time available and their application of a cognitive mechanism

NEXT LEVEL COACHING - DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES INTRODUCTION

                                     

With 2022 pre-season just around the corner, we're continuing on with the "Next Level Coaching" theme in a mammoth series of posts based off this study, titled "What Cognitive Mechanism, When, Where and Why? Exploring the Decision Making of Amateur and Elite Rugby Union Players During Competitive Matches."

It's a huge piece on it's own as you can see if you clicked the link, which took me a good 7 days to read, summarise and re-order into what I'll present here.

When copy and pasted into word it was 50 pages long which I managed to whittle down to 15 pages and 5,400 words of dot points, of which the following series of posts will consist of.

This is literally "next level coaching" as you'll learn a lot of new coaching terms but more importantly you'll gain an amazing insight into actual player decision making during games and all the processes they go through to reach each and every final decision.

If you're coaching and training is not set up to at it's very core, improve the decision making of your players, then are you really coaching?

Every tactical, technical and physical action is a decision made based on what's going around the player, whether they have the ball or not, so if you're not training to improve decision making then I'm not sure what you can expect from your players on game day. 

Before you can train the what, you need to understand the why, and this 18 or so post series will literally tell you all about this.

Each post will begin with any new terms you'll come across for the first time with a quick explanation of what it means to guide you through all these posts.

As I mentioned above I have re-ordered the information and broken it up into categories/subjects which I think makes it a lot easier to digest as the actual content jumps around a lot and could cause a lot of confusion when not familiar with all the new terms.

If you have any questions, comments or feedback throughout the next few weeks as these go up then don't hesitate to hit me up on the socials about it.

INTRODUCTION

NEW TERMS

Cognitive Mechanism - the tactical, psychological, technical, physical action decided upon by combining perception and action.

• The crux of decision making is to determine what cognitive mechanism to use, where to use it, when to use it and why use that particular option
• Personal perspective is dependent on stored mental representations that may or may not facilitate the retrieval of appropriate responses in time pressured competition environments
• In team sports the time available to perceive, access memory and then act on it alters rapidly between game moments
• Physical markers were previously used differentiate between players but those gains are now becoming more marginal and a more consistent differentiator of performance in invasion sports can be aligned with expertise in game intelligence and decision making

NEXT POST - TIME

NEXT LEVEL COACHING - RETRIEVAL PRACTICE

                                                           

Earlier in the week I posted about the forgetting curve and how you should review the previous day's content as soon as possible, to scaffold learning for long term retention.

Retrieval practice is one of the best ways to do this and here are some noted I gathered from education expert Doug Lemov on the subject, obviously in a student-teacher context,but it transfers to coach-player easily.

As mentioned in my earlier post, the process of forgetting contains seeds of its own solutions.

If you ask students to recall what they learnt yesterday then they will struggle to remember but once they are successful, that struggle will more deeply encode the material in their long term memory and they will remember a little more and forget a little less relatively quickly.

You need to ask students to pull information from long term memory which helps them remember more, for longer and with greater accuracy.

Every time they're required to retrieve, it makes it easier for them to recall this knowledge when they need it as it strengthens the connections to previous learning and the ability to apply it in different contexts.

The very best time for retrieval is once you start to forget it and as we now know that forgetting starts right away, start retrieving content shortly after learning it, then a day or so later an again a few days after that - each time with more fun and engaging questions or learning aids.

In football world, coaches only have maybe 3hrs per week split into 2 separate occasions to present content so using various teaching methods (diagrams, infographics, vision etc) in a group chat can be used for the time between training sessions.

A very important note to remember is to keep retrieval practice as exactly that, practice, with no marking for accuracy or shame for forgetting the content but with immediate feedback - it's simply used for teacher and student to know where their level of understanding is currently at which can guide the teacher an student to the relevant information during future retrieval opportunities.

Students remember more of what they are learning if they are required to think about meaning so ask them to respond to questions that cause them to consider the content in different context, applying vocabulary specific words in different ways and settings, where the meaning of the same words/actions can be altered.

Use retrieval practice routinely so it'snot a surprise when it happens, encouraging students to try and put more to memory faster.

Other retrieval practice methods include studying with flashcards, answering checks for understanding, weekly cumulative quizzes, mid lesson pauses where the teacher allow students to capture notes on what was just said and brain dumps (this very blog essentially!) where they write down everything they can recall about a topic.

Whatever modes you choose is not an issue but make sure you vary them to help transferring what they know into different contexts.

True retrieval practice is closed book so it is not what is coined as "studying" where students simply re-read content - it should be effortful and at times, a struggle.

Use bouts of spacing (smaller chunks of learning broken up v large chunks of content all ingested at once) as the brain actually needs hours, or even days, to consolidate/cement new knowledge and commit it to long term memory.

Going back to the forgetting curve, each repetition of retrieval results in remembering meaning for longer they can now go longer between each round of retrieval.

To create a retrieval progression simply make every 3rd question in a problem set on a previous topic, allowing you to continuously scaffold content until you get through it all.

You should also build quizzes around the current and previous content and make every 2nd problem in their classes and homework from today's content, 2 problems from the previous lesson's content and another 2 problems from even earlier content.

Lastly 1 final teaching aid you can use is the retrieval grid where each question has it's own color based on how long the content was covered such as the darker the color the further back it was covered (black/old to white/current) where students love trying to complete the grid, especially the darker squares.

NEXT LEVEL COACHING - THE FORGETTING CURVE

I would read as much content teaching/learning as I do anything because as a coach you're essentially a teacher, just not in an actual classroom.

Instead of questions that need to be answered in words or numbers, football problems need to be solved with a mix of technical, physical and tactical solutions but in an extremely time sensitive situation.

The forgetting curve is something I found from UK Basketball coach Alan Keane earlier this year and it's definitely something all coaches should be aware of.

Here's a very basic image of what it looks like:

                                              

As you can see you've got "content" on the vertical axis and "time since learning" on the horizontal axis.

The crux of the forgetting curve is that as soon as you teach/learn something, they/you begin to forget almost immediately.

You'll see 4 lines in the image with the blue line being the 1st learning repetition, the red line being the 2nd repetition, the blue squiggly line being the 3rd repetition and the red squiggly line being the 4th repetition.

On repetition 1, you learn something new but in minutes you've already begin to forget some of the details, with what you learnt an hour ago now becoming hazy to the point where only little initial learning is retained, indicated by the blue line.

If learning stops there on that specific subject or skill then you can see just how little content has been retained, learnt and stored in long term memory, compared to the level of content.

The level of content is ultra important as low retention of content means you've tried to fit too much content in too early, of the relatively small amount of content you have used only a fraction of it is being retained, or you're somewhere in the middle.

Ultimately without another exposure to this content, limited long term learning will take place.

Repetition 2, which contains the same content level as repetition 1, is attempted shortly after (i.e the next day) where the learner goes through the same process but uses a scaffolding of learning process where they build on what was retained the day before and hopefully adding new content on top of that for a higher level of retention then yesterday, as indicated by the red line.

Repetition 3 (blue squiggly line) and repetition 4 (red squiggly line) repeats this process an you can clearly see the scaffolding learning effect taking place over repeated exposures to the SAME, not different content.

I capital-lettered same because once the content changes then you're back to repetition 1 again and if that content is itself scaffolding on the previous content, then learning will be limited at best as learner's now start to skip learning steps that will result in gaps in knowledge or performance.

Lots of learning opportunities also means a lot of forgetting which is a a crucial part of remembering funnily enough as forgetting is another opportunity for (re)learning which will present learning and forgetting dips throughout the entire process which is messy but it drives clean performance over the long term so you must be patient enough to get through the struggle.

The easiest way go about this is to simply review yesterday's content, not preview today's content but being exposed to content 3 times can result in learner's being able to predict w/ 80 - 85% accuracy whether they have successfully learnt it or not, sliding right into the 15% failure rate that optimises learning.

So for coaches in season 2022, if you decide to implement new tactical aspects into your game model then make sure you take the learning curve into account and teach it accordingly by allowing ample opportunities for players to learn/retain basic tactical content before add more content on top of that which will require to you to really break down your tactical play before introducing it.