STARTING OUT WITH A CONSTRAINTS-LED APPROACH

                                                      

These points were made by various coaches to a Twitter thread by Philip O'Callaghan, a tennis coach who posts a lot about coaching with a constraints-led approach (CLA), a method I've also posted plenty on.

Take your best 6 - 8 points from here and start your own journey with CLA and watch player engagement, learning and thus performance take a huge leap in 2023.

1. Patience is the key, embrace the chaos, don’t stop them right on the cusp of learning, allow messiness
2. Be willing to explore practice design giving yourself some grace/patience and keep learning/exploring
3. Embrace mistakes
4. Start with an activity you already use, think about the mistakes usually made during it and try to think of some constraints that can help you address them instead of explicit feedback
5. Work with the end in mind and what behaviors you’d like to emerge from the task/learning environment and are they similar to those in games
6. What is the issue that you’re team is doing wrong, what are some of the underlying issues/rate limiters that may be the cause, understand how to use constraints to afford – create a learning environment for the players, revisit the big picture – has it improved and be patient
7. Think of constraints as situations, not limitations breaking down elements to a single focus and reward more points for the constraint you’ve added, less points any other way and don’t lose realism
8. Link constraints to behaviors/habits you want to create/develop in attack/defense for each age group you coach (intentional/deliberate practice)
9. Know various types of constraints (technical, tactical, team rules, in/out of possession etc), know when to use them, know how to use them (setting problem solving tasks for players to sort out themselves)
10. Read the play for the coachable moments, focus your aim with effective question’s to check for understanding
11. 1^st consideration x will this constraint restrict their options or promote exploration/steer towards a new solution (aim for new solution/s)
12. Why do you want to try an approach and if CLA is what you think will work best then try it, make mistakes and learn from them and get a peer to help you review
13. 1^st understand rules and create principles for the game while working with layers of principles/intentions as intentions drive solutions
14. Be patient, trust the process and constantly ask yourself what the purpose of the activity is and how can you change/adapt it to make the outcome/s stronger
15. Don’t be blinded by your own coaching biases by forcing a CLA to create outcomes that only you want to see by allowing creativity to guide your design (constraining to constrain v constraining to afford)
16. Realise that session/task design is the only thing in your control as coach
17. Go slow, think about how you want your team to play and build the opposition so they provide problems for your focus team that helps draw out your style of play (constrain attack to work on defense and vice versa)
18. What are your constraints trying to achieve
19. The rules are the most important constraints and then how can they exploit the rules to their advantage which is the role of tactics
20. Don’t rush, give yourself time to do some research, be curious, pay attention and link up with people to support you while understanding your sport, your athletes and the constraints involved and staying open to what emerges
21. Constraint to afford which is to create a situation (constrain the action) where the player has the opportunity to investigate a new movement/skill opportunity (affordance)
22. Empower your athletes and change from coach to a designer/gardener
23. Ease the grip on what you think you know and attend to what is emerging
24. Take what you're doing now and add a defender/s, add a time component, change field size, have 4 games playing at once instead of 1, keep it simple to start with and let the players explore
25. Constraint to afford, do not over-constrain, do not force a singular solution to problems, focus attention on intentions and do not force it
26. Enjoy not being tied to a plan – prepared no planned
27. Explain to players/parents your moving to CLA, understand that you/they won’t see immediate results and realise you will make mistakes creating environments
28. Create a safe environment where mistakes are OK and failing can help improve performance/learning
29. Set a specific goal and create congruent scenarios
30. Simplicity is key
31. Dig deeper as it’s not just about playing small sided games with an incentive or 2
32. Write your plan in pencil
33. Reward points for things you value with a basketball example being pass x 1pt, post pass x 2pts, backdoor pass x 3pts, lay up x 10pts, catch and shoot x 10pts, steals x 3pts etc and once 1 team hits 100 total points, then the opposition gets 1 possession to score for the win
34. Guide them where to look but not what to see
35. Create affordances rather than overlimiting the range of possible solutions
36. Patience, CLA increases realist encounters in an activity but it also means less success before consistent solutions are discovered through a loop of constraints - high struggle - exploration - less struggle -  solution/s
37. Start with a game and simplify/modify to encourage exploration of a set of skills you want your players to improve but modifications don't have to be complex and might jut be extra points for specific actions/outcomes
38. Create an environment that heightens the athletes awareness of the "flaw" where the environment gives the player the feedback, not the coach, then peel back the constraint to test its impact on the player but be strategic with it