PLAY FORM ACTVITIES STUDY

                                      

These notes come from a study I read a week or 2 ago about the use of play form activities during practice, looking at the why, how and benefits of doing so.

• Precisely simulates the properties of competition games in customised settings (contexts) designed to provide many opportunities for the emergence of focused actions/sequences of play
• Can provide rich opportunities to use perception, cognition and actions during learning whilst challenging players to engage in decision making, problem solving and co-positioning
• You need to customise play form activity configurations and manipulate their characteristics to reach specific objectives for which guidelines are not standardised
• Such formats can be used to substantiate a theme assigned to a training session or programme, in terms of the specific affordances or possibilities of play it is designed to offer the players
• Create play form activities within competition contexts
• Due to their mouldable nature, play form activities reflect varying contexts of play and are purposefully designed to emphasise the chosen theme
• They can also be modified/manipulated to provide opportunities for players to adapt their performance behaviors via changing their structure and organisation without taking away their principled intentionality to overcome the opposition to score, and to stop the opposition from scoring
• The existence of the key task constraints of opposition and scoring targets (goals/gates etc) are therefore non-negotiables for practice to keep the highest degree of representation
• Playing areas can be configured into different shapes and playing numbers can be dis/advantaged which can influence the player interactions that emerge and both translate to the time afforded to players to perceive information and make decisions in a space of play they are challenged to manage
• Coaches can scale/shape practice with the specific aim to match the current needs of players based on skill level, experience and proximity to competition
• Play form activities are framed portions of the game that ignite sought responses as opposed to pinpointing single actions in unrestricted contexts of play
• They can also differ from the original structure by changing playing area shape and the location of scoring targets
• Scoring targets facing each other like normal = actions played in width/depth (standard)
• Scoring targets facing each other + in the middle = actions performed inwards and outwards (centric)
• Scoring targets both located in the middle = actions performed around them (circular)
• Players can be encouraged to self organise (reposition themselves) and self regulate (manage behavior, reactions, feelings and surroundings) according to their intentions and competences to reach scoring targets
• Younger players need a good dose of centric/circular lay outs because the set up naturally sends them into wider areas but they can also diverge so far from the original structure of the game that it can drag players away from their collective organisation, specifically in preparation for competition, because of its lack of representative design
• In new contexts, self efficacy often restricts decision making and action regulation to the point that it affects the usual performance of players, sometimes negatively
• In most training training contexts, challenging circumstances are mostly created under affordance constraints of less space and time to make decisions and perform actions, or to solve the same problems playing with uneven numbers
• In small scaled playing areas, players have less time and space to perform stable actions (what they usually do) which disrupts maintenance of self-efficacy like keeping possession of the ball
• Activities should be configured to provoke intentionality in behaviors, acknowledging that efficacy in play requires time to adapt/attune to new movement tempos and space before achieving intended outcomes
• Space and time designed into activities make affordances available such as distances that emerge between players
• Distances between players that are too short for a specific group can make play impracticable for reaching the aimed level of performance behaviors because of too much participant density to afford intended actions which is problematic for player development if it leads them to not take risks or to simply play like always relying on speed and territory-based ball movement when you're able to play more slow/medium tempo footy and maintain possession for longer to have a greater impact on that particular play
• Task complexity and difficulty of contexts of play must be calibrated according to the experience and skill level of the player/s
• More complex contexts are depicted by the quality and quantity of information which results in the current case from their configuration
• Overwhelming levels of information can lead to more confusion and less success, especially if there is competition between augmented information from the coach and that which emerges during player interactions
• Complex situations can also provoke reinvestment strategies in players making them think more and decide less and inhibit them from enhancing their capacity to self regulate and maintain flow of performance
• Task complexity is based on the number of possibilities for actions and the number of opposition
• Activities can therefore be designed to decrease the number of action possibilities, guiding players towards specific solutions in an affordance landscape, or to challenge them in achieving specific contents, themes or outcomes in the play
• Any opportunity to practice should involve decision making and problem solving in game contexts
• Well designed play for practice can maintain the context and act of playing relevant to the development of the individuals involved
• Open ended practice refers to the use of small/isolated slices of the game
• Small sided conditioning games are small sided games with varying dimensions
• Analytical games refers to the use of bigger and more team-cohesive slices of the game
• Conditioning games use similar dimensions and player numbers to competition
• Full games can also be used
• Search solicits skill sets (technical/cognitive etc) altogether since it demands to change execution simultaneously whilst articulating all cognitive mechanisms to determine the best action to perform which often discriminates skill levels according to the complexity of the solutions to find
• Formats and their configurations thus result in different implications for practice even if they are all driven by the aim to repeat (the solving of a performance problem) without repeating (the same tech)
• The idea of specific intention assigned to each format becomes clear if the field of affordances and their arrangement are valid for the intended actions/training loads
• Formats finally gather the configurations that will most likely result in positive influences on player performance behaviors, making activities more motivating or playable
• As you progress through the different game levels, the environment supplies players with more affordances, higher repetition, increased difficulty and overall realism as the branches of affordance bandwidth increase
• The purpose of open ended drills is to practice simple actions and decisions, is execution driven, has direct individual opponent context, individual intention with the concepts of how/execution and when/simple cues
• Small sided conditioning games have the same actions in a changing environment, theme based context and group intention with the what/intentions and the why/game sense
• Analytical games involve the practicing actions in specific game-related contexts, is situation driven, uses specific situations of play context, is sectorial, is oriented by theme and desired solution with a focus on the who/roles + what/intentions + when/synchronised cues + how/execution
• Conditioning games insert actions in an adapted game context, specific moment and theme through constraints with a focus on the who/roles + what/intentions + when/synchronised cues + where/area context
• Full games prepare performance in competition contexts, is competition/scenario driven, includes the whole team, is realistic to performance with a focus on the who/roles + what/intentions + when/moment + where/area + how/execution
• For coaches to implement play form activity, they should begin from the respective age’s full game (5v5, 7v7, 9v9, 11v11 etc) and dissect the play into smaller parts, beginning from an action/sequence of play in the full game and going from there