Hi everyone, this is Dave Wright and welcome to the Play Development Project podcast. I hope you're having a fantastic week out there on the grass with your players. Before we kick off today's conversation, a very quick review of the latest content to come out on Play Development Project.com. Since our last podcast, where we shared a Q&A on Play recruitment, we've published three brand new pieces of content and we've got more coming soon.
Firstly, our resident professor, William A. Harper, has broken down a research paper on sports injury prevention. This review is really interesting given the increased coverage of youth sporting injuries he's been getting recently. The authors of this paper challenged some historical thinking on injury prevention and discussed the context of injuries over a one-size-fits-all approach.
So definitely worth the read. Secondly, we've released a new masterclass discussion with PDP Lead researcher James Vaughn on player motivation. In this one, PDP technical advisor Dan Wright hosts Jimmy for a great conversation on how our environments influence the way we play and both Latany, Rehima, Vech and Yannick, Balassie, two of Jimmy's favorite examples of creativity and football come up in this one so don't miss it. Finally, we've just published a new blog from Nick Sodestram on Learning versus Performance.
Now, this is Nick's second article shared with the PDP community and I highly recommend it. We've also got some more live sessions and brand new members feature coming for PDP members very soon. So watch the space. Now, today's podcast is a special 60-minute edition featuring one of our longest supporting contributors and a genuine coaching innovator, Mark Upton.
Mark and I sit down for an hour to discuss contemporary coaching environments, organizational culture, sports science and much more. Mark is the co-founder of My Fastest Mile, a social enterprise designed to examine how sport provides meaning for people right from participation through to performance. He's also got extensive experience in AFL and he's worked at both the Australian Institute of Sport and the English Institute of Sport. If you haven't seen Mark's work before, jump onto the PDP website and search his name or head to myfastestmile.com to see more there.
Now, today, as mentioned, we dive down a number of rabbit holes in this one from Culture and the purpose of youth sport, how to interpret academic literature and coaching, plus things like the commercialization of youth sport and how some current paradigms have been influenced by tradition and industry. There's lots of ideas for coaches in this conversation and a quick mention to our digital marketing coordinator, Camille, for doing a great job editing this despite some audio and WiFi issues during the call, which are outside of our control on the day and apologies if the audio jumps around a little bit, but she's done a great job putting this together for our audience. Look out for more great content on the site next week and as always a reminder, if you haven't signed up to become a PDP member, we have monthly annual or club membership options available at playedavaldmaproject.com. So you can sign up and access all of our top coaching content, including the new PDP Slack community.
Finally, if you give a chance, leave us a review for the podcast and I hope you enjoy today's discussion. Hi, everyone. My name is Dave Wright and welcome to another Playa Development Project Masterclass discussion. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Mark Upton.
Mark, how are you? I'm very well Dave. How are you, Matt? Yeah, good looking forward to another great conversation with you now.
For those who haven't seen a lot of Mark's work, he's one of our longest serving and supporting contributors on the Playa Development Project website. A huge amount of his content which people can search using his name on the site. So Mark, before we get into sort of, I guess, a bigger picture conversation around some of your work and some of your observations. Can you give us a bit of insight into your journey after co-founding My Fastest Mile, working at English Institute of Sport and also having an extensive background in AFL?
If you can sort of elaborate a little bit on that, that'd be great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I guess if we start at the end, I'm now back in Australia as the follow-through back day. So be back for nearly 18 months or so after going for using England, doing a bit of English but also to my, a wider, I guess, remit than that as well as developing other roles in kind of the Olympic high-performance system.
So the performance directors and head-to-performance, staff-friend leadership and culture, so it became quite expansive. And during that time in England as well, I'd met up with our Smith who was also the AS of that time and ours just, I guess, started to get the wheels rolling on My Fastest Mile, which is what I'm most involved with now as a social enterprise. So we're really looking at how, whether it's participation in talent or performance systems, if you like, how sport can provide meaning and purpose for people, whether it can be striving to be high-performance as well as have other positive outcomes or they're just out to be participants and have a social experience with sport. We're trying to understand what are the dynamics that need to be in play across all levels from on the grass, right up to the ballroom or funding bodies at a national level.
What sort of coherence do we need to try and make that experience as good as it can be? Yeah, really interesting journey and no doubt you've sort of made some pretty interesting observations along the way in terms of how cultures reflect and sport and we'll get into that. But since you've moved back from England and come back to Australia, there've been any sort of key differences that you've noticed within the English or the Australian sporting landscape. Yeah, probably had a number of conversations around this that naturally come up with people in Australia now asking about comparisons to England or equally people still back in England.
So, the part is historically a cyclical relationship because in particular again at that high performance level is whoever's perceiving to have them all success. The other country or region tends to copy or try and grab what they perceive from the outside probably is there's some of those things that are driving the success and adopt them. So, it's probably coming a bit there the other way at moment as you're trying to grab from some of what's been happening in England and apply that down here in Australia. I think in terms of coaching when I left England, what it felt like is this and I've been to the North towards as well, David, when you left was there was some real momentum starting to be around coaching, the groups on what is quality coaching but again at all different levels and contexts and how we develop coaches either formally but probably even more so organically and coaches don't appreciate the importance of their learning and development.
And whilst that, I'm sure England is still a relatively small percentage of coaches, it feels like there's a real momentum building, then Australia feels like it's still a bit of a step or two back from that, to that in my perception on what your thoughts are. Yeah, look, I tend to agree I think and whether that's the nature of being caught up in the social media space or being in the day to day grind or the week to the grind of coaching. You do see things that are happening but I do agree that there was some momentum there in terms of coach education, public desire for knowledge and seeking out resources and the conversations that were happening as well as things like informal events. I know you guys have an event called Relern which got a great uptake and I think there was certainly some movement.
Coming down here, one of the key observations I made was really, I do think it's easy to ship a code up but I don't think we should think of when it all cosmetality is very prevalent and I look globally and I look at different sports landscapes and having different contexts and friends working across different countries. I think that Australian sport is actually starting to replicate American sport in many ways and there could be various reasons for that but I think there is certainly a really positive movement happening in the UK around coaching and questioning tradition and perhaps that needs to happen a little bit more down in Australia. Yeah, I agree with that. I actually commented earlier this week where we came up about lots of different cultures and particularly under European cultures maybe Scandinavian and American cultures are really interesting and again it's more it has to be observations from outside but maybe some of the European cultures, the Scandinavian cultures have a more nurturing approach to young people and that's my concern in Australia is that we're, I think we had that in a different way in the past in kind of a rough and tumble but generally positive and nurturing way but I think James Warren's blogged about a lot of around performance and status anxiety and I think we coined a term with him and his partner Hannah one stage around curiosity.
I've become very serious and we did all costs and I worry about what that's doing to young people while the effects not just in sport but at a societal level. Yeah, I think the nature of growing up in New Zealand Australia or maybe we're starting to sound old and it's a generational thing but you can sort of talk about free playing. We recently had DB Sayers from Solsbury Robers on the podcast talking about what they're doing in terms of trying to bring free play to the forefront of their club program which is quite innovative and there's many clubs trying to do that but I think that sort of lost around play and the status conversation with Jimmy as a fascinating one and no doubt we'll have another discussion with him at some point involving his latest research around the impact of status and culture and potentially capitalistic ideals creeping into sport which again ties back to the win-and-all cost narrative but it is a very interesting space and I think the Scandinavians have always been quite progressive around education and that nurturing approach. I remember meeting some Swedish women's football players and Norwegian international when I was in Oslo and they talked about how progressive the women's game was even through the 70s, 80s, 90s and now we're seeing this mainstream movement around women's football and the passion behind improving the women's game.
I think they can be quite innovative and very much leaders in the youth space. That's very interesting. Yeah, for sure. I guess women's football is fascinating in itself isn't it at the moment of where that obviously the World Cup recently and again some of the topical issues you do with politics and things that matter that are just fascinating melting pot at the moment where all that could go.
I guess like most times there's actually a lot of opportunity to create some different conversations and different narratives and say can it go in a different direction equally? It could get dragged into some other places that maybe have some harmful effects. Yeah, well let's hope Donald Trump stays out of it. That would be a good start.
I mentioned his name. Yeah, we'll try not to. They're probably listening. So in terms of the topics of non-linear pedagogy just to sort of shift the tack a little bit here and the constraints lead approach to coaching, this is an area that you've sort of written a lot about a lot of your workers around this.
Can you, for those who are listening who may be learning these terms or a little unfamiliar with it, can you give us sort of a brief definition of how you interpret non-linear pedagogy and also constraint-led approach? Because I know in conversations with yourself over the years it certainly helped my understanding. Yeah, yeah actually I hadn't really been in that headspace. I haven't been doing so much work on the skill act and those types of frameworks and principles lately.
So it's interesting that just having a spot trying to get into how quickly it lines some of them. I guess they go and read the resources on me or on other blogs and what not around the place. Yeah, just thinking actually since I've wrote some of that through four or five years ago. It was probably just any of the blogs I write and I do is helping me kind of to make sense of my own experiences and journey as well.
So I think you mentioned at the top, you know, it's been quite a few years in AFL and kind of trying to make sense of things like how much structure should you give players and what really makes for a top player or like, you know, excellence in a team's full-time context. And yeah, some of the ideas that I was then exposed to like through Rick Cheddarworth and that around constraints lead approaches or more looking at complex systems. I think that was like, again, it's retrospective with the key breakthrough for me. What's the implications of complexity and seeing people teams as these kind of complex adaptive systems and so a constraints approach, I guess, sits on top of that.
And I think obviously the people get done search for it or read up on it. I think the constraints lead approach to the terminology is probably not helpful in a couple of ways. So constraints, I think the term constraints is often seen as restricting or constricting, whereas that's not necessarily the case. These are just constraints and influences or potentially shapes things, but it's not necessarily good or bad in their own right.
Nothing the other thing is saying has an approach. So particularly in football, I think when we think about an approach, we're probably thinking like about a methodology of coaching or instructing or feedback or whether we use more technical practices. But it's not actually at that level. Constraints is probably more, again, just a constraints approach is saying, what are all the constraints that are interacting or influencing on a system, whether that's a single player, your team, your national sport or culture, just how much do we understand all these things that are interacting and influencing and what and how can we start to shape or manipulate some of these constraints.
And so how you do that, at times it might be that you use a heavy amount of instruction and feedback, or you do do isolated technical training. So I think that's where there's been a bit of confusion that through the language is actually probably not helpful in terms of constraints and an approach. So I think that's just probably more recent reflections in the last couple of years. Without that, learning probably makes sense to people, just read previously all this stuff, not just my stuff, but other people have kind of written and discussed those ideas.
Yeah, look, I agree with you. And I think that was one of the big stopping points in my learning was the language. And I think once you get beyond the word constraints and restrictive and preventative or all the other sort of things that pop into your mind, and you accept that they are influencers perhaps. I sort of look at it now as a bit of a web, and I like to think that everything is interacting, whether that's a coach athlete, whether that's a coach club, a player to the club, players and parents, all of these things potentially in the micro environment, and then you've got those broader cultural influences like you touched on.
And I guess the weight of the web can almost shift depending on the moment that you're in, whether that could be stage of the season or it could be otherwise. So yeah, I think it's a fascinating thing. I agree. You've got to do a little bit of reading to get you hit around it, but it's an interesting way to start reflecting on coaching practice without a doubt.
Yeah, absolutely. I love the way I just described that as well, David, about the webs and that is one of the ways I guess if you talk about how to model complex systems, one of the most common approaches is kind of a network and that's the type of approach where you literally are mapping all these things and the connections and whether they're positive connections or more negative or inhibiting ones and just kind of map that landscape to help go through it. Map that process doesn't tell you the way, but it just increases your understanding and awareness and it's this idea of really probing and experimenting with things to navigate your way forward. Definitely.
And I think the other thing, again, personally, I've come to accept as the value of the place of the spectrum and as you touched on it could be different types of practice from one into the other, but there is a spectrum and there is a place for everything within the diet of youth sport and in terms of skill acquisition as well, which also segues nicely to our next question. In your mind, you've touched on a couple of differences between perhaps the UK and Australia since you've returned, but are there some areas of youth development in particular where you think in that youth and coaching space, there are some big challenges in front of us? And if so, what are some of those things that you're observing? Yeah, I think and you mentioned it probably earlier.
I think in youth development at the moment is why and why are we doing this for? So what's our in goal or intentions with it? And again, is it very win-it-all-cost or performance-focused? And how do you balance that out with again more nurturing or developmental type experiences?
And so I think then it's not again to polarise and go, it's either or there's definitely tensions there. And I think that's the biggest challenge just overall at the moment is to resist getting drawn too much to that, what we might call that mechanistic approach that purely is about developing players so that we can either sell them or win trophies. Yeah, it's a bit of a disconnect, isn't it? Yeah, equally.
So then, and actually to the chat, I have the psychologists recently around a lot of the mental health stuff is equally not just going completely all the other way and not for those who want to strive and aspire to see how good they can be, not also not to eliminate opportunities for them to do that. Hence, it is, yeah, there's these tensions there that just I think just need a lot of attention and we need some root wisdom to navigate that. It's interesting you say that I recently finished reading a book called Identity Crisis by Ben Elton, which is a very, very sort of satirical and black comedy look at the state of the world, particularly around politics and culture. And I think we are, and the book is really focused on the age of outrage, whether that's political greatness through to people who might be considered to be old fashioned.
And I think sometimes in the youth sporting space, people can see something and go, well, that's fluffy, that's ridiculous. And in quiet, the opposite, they might say, no, there's no place for winning, there's no place for performance. And it's about marrying up the two. I think that's kind of where you're getting to, but it's fresh in my mind as well from a coaching perspective because I do believe there's a place for competitiveness and for winning and how you frame winning and success is really the key to it.
Whether it's the extrinsic motivator of the trophy versus as a player getting better than what they were the day before, I think they're two very different things. Absolutely. Again, I think it's been discussed a reasonable amount, not written a bit about another so too about certainly competitiveness is in sports are inherently competitive. So that's part of their nature.
And again, that therefore almost in a way is a neutral thing. So that can be used in a really positive way. Or as we know, you can get too caught up and associated with competitiveness is about winning and purely what a scoreboard might say on a weekend's game. And that crowds out everything else.
So yeah, and agree, I think the competitive element can be really positive. I remember just a Saturday morning training session at MySAR was involved, the club he was involved in in England, just a local village club essentially, positioning that once they didn't want to transition, the normal, the usual coach wasn't there and a couple of other parents helped out. And they basically just played a game, but the parents got involved and they did a brilliant job of making it really competitive, but in a positive way. And made it which team of you, which country you and I think might have been around the 2014 or 16 Euro.
So they're basically like simulating your Spain, your England and they kept it close and there's a penalty shoot out in the end. And so once in one, the other kids were like, oh, so it's really competitive. But 10 is probably 30 seconds later, they're wondering off the page, something around, having shots on goal. Others are already thinking about whether they're going to Macos or what they're doing after training.
So there's no consequences if you like. So there's a lot of competitive is in the moment in a really positive way. But I think for the so-called losing team, there was no judgment. There was no consequence.
It was, yeah, it just stayed in the moment. Well, they've had the experience, haven't they? And of course, they'll be able to recall that experience the next time it happens. And I look at this when I go to coach and we always try and create competitive sessions.
And we've said this on a lot of our Q&As and different discussions that I've done with Dan and other guests is that you're very, really a kid that doesn't enjoy a bit of competition, particularly if they're choosing to be involved in sport. So I think there is that we can accept that it's there. It's just how we as adults look at it, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.
And that's probably part of it. Because you include us as well, the current generation of adults is, yeah, your own maturity, your own self-awareness, your own wisdom really. So manage yourself. That's what seems to be more an issue is that adults being out to manage themselves in competitive kids environments.
Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's a very, yeah, adult expectations on that lens can be very interesting because at times the anxiety can be coming from the parents or the adults involved. So I guess as well, we touched a little bit on the idea of play there.
And I know you said it's been a little while since you've really been exploring the skill acquisition stuff, but we very much respect and appreciate your opinion. I mean, in terms of play, and obviously we touched on the idea that perhaps within culture is disappearing a little bit. How important is it that we start to recreate these environments in youth sport? I think that you mentioned Debbie Sayers earlier.
I don't know if I can remember hearing where to hear from a recently. I remember she was talking about play. And purely the first point of call to call is just purely play for play's sake. So I think that's probably the most important thing is not because it might help us develop as football players or develop certain skills or creativity or decision making.
That might be almost an unintended consequence. But I think the priorities, yeah, just play for play's sake. And having, again, just I think it's really important we have some dialogue around that. And therefore it's place in society and it's placed in young people's lives and what we might need to do to facilitate bringing some of that.
We're not bringing that back, but just making sure play remains part of the culture. I think New Zealand, I really like again with the New Zealand earlier day when we are there that they say through sport New Zealand and in some of their frameworks and strategies they really seem to be pushing play. Absolutely. Yeah, which is often really positive.
Yeah, I think there's a real shift over there around the getting away from early specialization. We've seen that in North Harbour rugby as a great case study in terms of removing those representative tournaments at age 13, 14, and just pushing it back a couple of years because really, especially in a sport like rugby, there's a lot where it is, a lot of your attributes are physical. That is of course going to come later. So it makes sense to make that decision around that code.
Whereas in other codes, then maybe gymnastics, for example, it might be something that people do younger. So there may be different frameworks or different sports. But there certainly is a push over there. And I think it's one of those things.
I know when Dan spoke to Debbie, one of the things that came up from his perspective was when he recently questioned a group of players he was working with around how often they played without an adult prison. And a lot of them had to actually think hard as to when they'd go down the park on their own or with their mates or whatever. Which again, it's something that's a generational change. It's then about when has played genuinely play and how do we recreate those environments?
As you say, the skill acquisition, but it's just an outcome really, isn't it, that may happen by accident. That's right. It's again, an interaction with other things. So I guess there's a lot of talk at the moment in Australia, isn't it?
When we're looking at our youth pathways and youth development in football, it's football culture. So it's again going to be in the mix that if you have a culture of play interacting with a football culture, it's probably fairly likely a lot of that play is going to take the form of football, backyard, street, wherever park football. So yeah, it's not, yeah, I think again, it's in the wet, isn't it? Yeah, it's interesting.
If we take Australia as a case study, in that sense, are there any sort of key things you're identifying culturally around that? Now, whether it's in football, I know you were young, lad, plays football, and you've had some real exposure working with different organisations in the football space. But is there anything you look at culturally that's perhaps standing out in that youth space at the moment, which is raising concern? In football in particular?
Yeah, I guess it could be youth sport in Australia where you might want to take football as an example. But yeah, I think it is. Well, again, pragmatically, isn't it? So if at the moment we're not seeing kids take up the opportunity for free play for whatever reason, and I said I see it in my own household day today, as it challenges the time's dragging my way away from screens, but again, there's so many factors involved involved in that.
Yes, I end up playing with him quite a bit. He goes to school 20-minute drive away, so he doesn't actually have a lot of mates directly that he knows right in our street or community. And again, this diminishing community feel as well or neighbourhood feel is you don't just go and knock on doors or you don't know the neighbours as well or their kids. So it is potentially isolating.
So there's a lot of challenges there around, I think, getting free play up and running. So I think, pragmatically, it's all that's left then seems to be the other end of the extreme where all their sport experience from younger and younger ages is highly organised and structured. It seems to be the same Australia wasn't so much in the UK around playing for a club, whether it's football, whether it's Aussie rules, whether it's cricket or basketball, or a town, so he plays club. This is a nine-year-old.
It's a whole whole lot. So there's no in-between. So again, I guess that's the interesting one, isn't it for the challenges? How do we structure appearances?
So if we have to manufacture them a little bit, how do we do that? Where's the right balance? So if we're a coach of 10-year-olds and we're putting on a session, how much actually should we just say the first 20 minutes, you just go and make your own game up and play? Yeah, well, I think that same song or right, but I think it makes me thinking about those things.
100%. I think you've touched on again the status thing in terms of people putting an emphasis on playing in a club and the status that goes with that and which club is it? Is this club better than that club? And then that kind of competition between parents or between players around that status, but the community ones are really interesting thing.
I think there's no doubt there is a diminishing community. You can think back to generations perhaps again, sounding old, but growing up and borrowing, starting from your neighbours or ducking over to your neighbours' place, or if you kick the ball over next door, it wasn't a big deal to go next door and get it. So maybe it's not the same for kids now and again, how are adults we can help recreate and facilitate that? Is it a real challenge in the modern world?
Absolutely. And I guess linking a little bit of theory or some of the principles we work off would be the saying is, what's the potential of the present? So what can we do in the present, rather than get a coin in the past and trying to say, let's bring back the past where we can't in the past. So in the present with the current dynamics or the current where that is, how can we move forward?
How can we create some of these opportunities, which might have to come yet look different in a way or be done slightly differently? Yeah, it's easy to get nostalgic. There's no doubt about that. We need to try and avoid it.
Let's shift towards performance narratives. Now, this is again, there's a great article you shared on the PDP website and by my fastest mile a little while ago on performance narratives and other alternatives to this. In modern sport, you've touched on the comparison and the status play around clubs perhaps there. But there seems to be this push and obviously my lens is generally football, but I've been lucky enough to go in, for example, and have a look at the Australian youth cricket environments and see what's going on in there, which was very, very interesting in terms of some of their challenges, and of course speak to different people across codes.
But there seems to be this push where performance narratives are being pushed younger and younger, whether that's through the way we just warm up perhaps and traditionally it might be kids turn up to training and they just go play, whereas now we go and we go through certain warm ups. Maybe that's because medical science has come further and we understand more about injury prevention and so on, which is great. But there is this push and obsession towards measuring and performance and data and these kind of things. So I want to have a little discussion around this because I'm not scenario, we're both interested in.
What are your thoughts around this push of this narrative into youth sport? Yeah, multiple, if you like multiple performance narratives and what you touched on there, it's one of them probably some of the stuff I've blogged about in the past and spoken about the round of performance narratives is more about that identity of kind of from a young age. You know, you are a footballer, you need to commit 100% of being a footballer and you need to grind and you need to commit hard work, all that type of thing. If you're ever going to make anything of yourself, whereas there are suggestions that actually you can still become a high performer or achieve excellence in your sport or your chosen field without having to beat that narrow in your identity or the narrative that can be a bit broader.
Probably fitting now is that with again the idea of early specialisation versus the thinking around specialising later, more diversity, more of our variability of experiences and that all I think feeding to this idea of identity and again with mental health and those types of things is that that's heavily tied up with that as a narrow performance, performer identity can cause real issues whilst it can drive performance, but it can cause real issues during your lifetime as a participant or performer and probably more so we see it upon transitions or retirement and these types of things. So that's my aspect, I would again, the second one is yeah, I guess more what, yeah, in Australia would be high performance or kind of elite standards, that seems to be the cliches in terms of now, yeah, if we've got 10 year olds that know how to kick a ball half decently that okay, we need to create elite standards or a high performance environment around or for them. Yeah, where do you want to start with that one? Well, I was going to say it can certainly open up a can of worms.
So I couldn't agree more, I think the word elite with youth players is a dangerous one, I think it's not a word I'm a fan of and obviously I'm in a position where I'm sort of trying to promote the messages we promote and we promote a lot of research or evidence based content, but I've also worked in these environments where there are young kids in these environments and so I've been at times a defender of academy football if we take that as an example because I see the good things that are happening sometimes for the players involved. Of course, there are things that don't sit comfortably and you can speak more candidly about when you're outside of those environments such as retaining release of players at very young ages and the anxiety and the problems that can breed because often I don't think the parachutes there and the area of athlete identity is one I'm also fascinated with because I think we're seeing so what we do is we see the athletes that might land themselves a job in the media, might land themselves a job in coaching and they're the ones that are okay but where's the 95% of retirees or ex-athletes or players that put everything in and injury stop at the 2122 and suddenly they've got to work out where they belong in the world and they've got nothing else so I think sport does fail people at times in that sense whereas it has the opportunity if we shift the narrative particularly in those younger age groups around participation enjoyment funding the focus of actually being a real social good so it is a balancing act and I think again my experience would suggest that you know and I had this conversation recently in a master class with Arthur Brammow who's now over in New York but was it following with me and you know he was speaking about how he sort of question now whether the foundation phase in those 9s to 12s still had the relevance that perhaps it did now the system dictates that those clubs need to have that age group but I think there are more and more people questioning should we be bringing kids in that young when the system perhaps statistically spits them out by 12 or 13 and again what are the problems that go with that and essentially one to discuss because again I can think of kids I worked with at that age who are still in the system having a great time or perhaps enjoyed being in the system for that time so I don't have the answer but I think it's a fascinating topic for conversation yeah yeah absolutely and I think you know if it's starts with well I think it can be helpful to put aside let's go a little bit older so let's say so put aside whether or not they should be coming into something that's branded as an academy or all those sorts of things you know they they've looked at their love football and they have got a bit of an aspiration so it's a really push themselves and be better okay well what does that environment need to look like what's what's the philosophy you know what's the ethics what's the skill sets we need for it to make a really high quality it's not sort of a legal high form the high quality environment for its world or 13 year old kid in general again actually knowing that or each one of those that whilst they might be in that age range is obviously going to be different so without saying it's a blank approach which is what do we think of some of the big rocks that we should first attend to in our conversations rather than go well yeah the high before the first team in the club has this set up around them in the high performance so that's what we'll do with 12 year olds absolutely yeah and it seems so obvious doesn't it know what you surely would do that but the evidence is building that that is happening in hell of a lot yeah and I think I think the word academy you can also be brandy about a little bit in the marketing sense and everything sort of labeled a pathway or academy I can't remember the name of the gentleman I saw in a video again I think it was through a New Zealand website somewhere but talking about that the word pathway should really be removed from youth sport and that's an interesting one just to question that as to whether you know even the word pathway and saying that it's going to be this kind of straight line when we go back to our conversation on non-linear pedagogy and and the non-linear journey of youth development or anything we do is never a straight line I think when we create the word pathway there becomes an expectation potentially from participants or family involved in that there's going to be a straight line from point A to point B so maybe that's another one we need to challenge yeah yeah and again where I guess now that some of the evidence that he's emerging again is pushing against that so I know I think it is a Ted Krautner I think Joy the people he's blog post looked at some Zagreb in the academy so the ages the players that have gone on to become yeah I guess high quality or professional players when they actually joined the academy and largely it's later on 15-16 plus is when they actually got involved in those environments which which really again just leaves that open is you know what's again not necessarily right but what other experiences are they having at those earlier ages and what is the right time to to come into a more formal deliberate focused environment which I believe there is a time and I again purely opinion hopefully somewhat informed opinion I think it is around that 16-17 mark that that is the time potentially to crank things up a bit because it is a real challenge and a lot of sports of real life as a huge gap instead now to make from that top end of underage to then senior professional wider club teams or national teams that gap is one that a lot of you know sports bodies and clubs I think are thinking a lot about is what needs to be in that say 16-17 to 2021 which I know you're in Dave so do you just talk on that yeah look I think again it depends on the individual I mean I know I've written an article called the player which is sits on the PDP website around and that sites anomalies like Annamol Alutman and Michael Antonio you know both Premier League players who are probably anomalies or exceptions and how late they were picked up and recruited but they sort of I guess back up the argument that you're making where they were identified so late and they come from their formal environments then there'd be people on other end of the spectrum who might look at somebody who's been through the academy process from under nine and made it to first team so we know the process works but then the question is what's the collateral damage and so there needs to be some objective kind of studies I think on this in terms of the the older age group so I tend to agree that that age of 15-16 is probably where I see that that sweet spot where players who I've worked with again more recently in Australia are starting to become a little bit hungry for a bit more and maybe they want to learn a bit more and I think you can start pushing a little bit harder but again it's relative to the individual because some may need something at 15-16 others aren't quite ready for until 16-17 so the best advice there is just to know your players and know what they need at the time and players will have dips they'll go up and down and they'll have moments where they look unbelievable and then they might for two weeks like they can't kick a ball and that's okay you've got to kind of ride it out and try and support them through that and take a longer term view. Absolutely and then yeah I guess having some of that and completely agree mate but as well because we might be trying to challenge them stretch players a little bit more doesn't mean they can't still be joy and fun and play maybe in terms of a quite different way so it doesn't mean it just has to get into your complete seriosity and again exclusively focused it's all about football etc etc we can still still have I think a much broader and rounder conception whole thing to that phase yeah definitely it's very interesting now another topic that you've written about a lot is the concept of learning dynamics and you've also touched on the idea of tradition through education systems or perhaps mechanistic or linear models that are infiltrating sport and I know which hits and very articles and views on the side around that can you elaborate a little bit more on your perspective of how tradition whether that's through education or whether that's through industry has potentially influenced the way learning dynamics are happening or potentially education systems or sports environments have been created. Yeah I think probably a friend of the moment is more the touch on industry there yeah he's more historically how things like organization and management have worked so if we follow if we go with kind of the same that you know sort of become more professional and people some people the argument that sport is a business and again that's open to a pretty deep discussion I think but if we say it is become more formal and organized so I think what we're seeing is again the uncritical adoption of a lot of organizational and management approaches that and this is not just a problem it's for but a lot of people and theorists and others have identified is yet really a legacy of an industrial age deal which was picked for purpose at the time where again people working on a production line are very narrow tasks that they basically could do in isolation so didn't there wasn't interaction necessarily as much as work and tasks and jobs these days or playing on a football pitch obviously and the nature of the work as well you probably needed extrinsic rewards or external incentives people whether that's around pay or other things and it seems again we've just continued to adopt those and you can summarize this mechanism kind of linear extrinsic approaches to management and organization that I think again that's that's for me the now layer probably where we're trying to I guess work at most through MFM is that that layer of organization so where that CEO is all directors of football or the people kind of in that area yeah I think it's really interesting and I think obviously Saken Robinson was one who perhaps was quite high profile in questioning the role of education and how school's called kill creativity I know it's one that Jimmy's referenced a lot in his work particularly a few years ago when he was doing his masters but it's one of those where I sort of look at it simply and think well why do we have to sit in lines let's say sit in order in a classroom and there is often that sort of and we've talked about this when it comes to sort of coach development or coach education events where we don't want to facilitate something where it's teach tell and somebody else listens and again recently decided another contributor on the podcast and a masterclass with Aaron Danks where he talked about he didn't he sort of got to the point where he's accepted that the coach doesn't need to be the fountain of knowledge and he's gone towards this goal of becoming a better facilitator and still openly expressing some vulnerability there by saying look I still want to get better at this which I thought for a coach working at international level with with top-top players was a really nice example of how coaches at all levels should be hungry to learn so going back to the point I think that we've got to look at it and go why do we need structure to get learning why do we need structure to get you know what is the role and structure in some of those organizations now whether that's the organization could be as simple as your grass-roots football team is that the coach standing there as the boss or the manager or the person in charge telling their group of young players what to do or is it the CEO or an organization micro-managing and these are similar things aren't they so I mean you've got experience across both spaces is there sort of a crossover there for you oh absolutely yeah I think that's the the threat that runs through it and I know again our Smith was talking about this quite a few years ago yeah particularly right as a coach development is okay we're shifting for the coach to be more of the facilitator and we're looking to create more representative environments well what about if we look at the yeah the context of coach education development should not the coach developer educator be facilitated and why are we taking coaches out of their environment to see in the classroom or a non-representative context so much and I'd say you don't do that at all so I think yeah that that is the common and so the common thread is really around how do we organize manage lead in complexity and can you can and pretty central to all of this is how much can you actually control and complicated systems is yeah you can actually control them to a large degree we're talking human complex social systems you control ability to control is only is ever very limited so that that's if you like the foundational philosophy or paradigm that's the shift I guess or trying to put that in the mix of conversation yeah look and I think what we're doing here is trying to encourage that healthy and robust debate not to undermine everything but to question things that we do and again the topic of control was one that when Jimmy was recently in Melbourne we were talking extensively about and he's put here a fantastic article which will be up on the website and due course around this and I think it's an area we need to continue to explore around coaches and control and that that sometimes for me it's a mask given security that if we're not in control then we're not being an effective coach therefore it becomes the default setting so I think again it's an area that needs to be questioned absolutely and it's back to you know when we're talking earlier I guess about how adults manage themselves and their own emotions around competitive and they're seeing kids forward as the same thing around yeah control or uncertainty so if the world's uncertain you know how self-aware am I about how I respond to uncertainty and many people and I can pitch myself doing it or yeah reflect on myself doing it even in home or personal context when there's an uncertainty you can get anxious or stressed and understandable and sometimes default reaction is to try and control things more than you can and often that just actually escalates or makes things worse so yeah self-awareness yeah I think it is huge certainly a key attribute of an effective coach let's move the discussion towards sports science another topic that you know I'm starting to become a lot more interested and I've been lucky enough over the years to work with some great sports scientists and coaching who are highly effective at integrating their work and individualizing their work so we talked a little bit about I guess performance narratives and I think tied with that is an obsession of measuring things now whether that's hard data or whether that's trying to put things in a row perhaps because of that mechanistic view that we've touched on where do you think this desire to test measure quantify and assess has come from and why is it so prevalent at the moment in the sporting space particularly again around youth development yeah I think we can probably go back with like zone about with educational and organizational paradigms you can probably go back a long long way to this type of debate of where is it where is it come from and you know maybe to the group philosophers I imagine around but essentially talking reductionism yes exactly yes and yeah again there's you know very valid views that where everything is reductionist at point it's just where you draw your boundary around something so reduce it down because in the end you probably always have to reduce or focus on something to be out act on it so but yeah I think reductionism has been strong in particularly western culture and society for a long long period of time I think my perceptions of what's now amplifying that is obviously is technology so massively technology led as in we're able to collect a hell of a lot of data now relatively easily compared to the time to on by so you've got a reductionist paradigm it's always been there for however couple hundred years but now married up with this ability just to collect data which and they're close to closely linked so I think that's now unfortunately or the mistake you can take is to let sports science which is much broader than just than just data or quantification or measurement that's where sports science can get a bad name but when it's becoming technology led or this is the data we can capture or we can automate capturing this data so then what are we going to do which is completely the wrong way to be going about anything where don't mate have a really valuable role to play but you don't start with the data now I think the misstep that we're seeing quite frequently yeah great and I think it's a really important note just to put that caveat on sports science not just looking at strength and conditioning or testing and measuring the social science has obviously fallen into that area as well so we need to acknowledge those and the importance of the spectrum of those but yeah I think it is interesting and I think that technology pieces there as technology grows you know we feel that we have to use it all the time when sometimes I think our human instincts can be quite valuable on a training pitch for example when it comes to and again I'm not saying that you know you can sit there and test and measure on instinct the level of fatigue or the distances players have run but you can also see sometimes where perhaps players are a little bit fatigued or players might need to change up or we might need to just mix the week up or change things a little bit of training because you get that experience and instinct that goes with and sometimes you've got to trust that as a coach as well.
Oh absolutely as a sports scientist as well so I think you know if we bring wisdom back into the conversation and I know we shared a couple articles doing with Dave this week around some experience people kind of science high performance practitioners sharing their views so you know Tony Strudwig's written about it so for their man new and with the well chef I think he's now back in club football Dave Reddon Craig Duncan who's been in football in Australia for a long period of time Keith Lyons John Keelier wrote a few names down yeah and then through that period where there was a few testing but there wasn't a prevalence of data so they've had to combine whatever data they could collect again with good observation good professional judgment good instincts if you like as sports essentially and I think regards to your coach or a sports scientist yeah you should be combined those those things remember one of the first coaches I worked with back in the hour at Phil he tells you tell story of a coach that he had back in 70s or 80s and his measure I guess of the intensity of the drill or the game was when the players came in with their sweat on the ball so you can see the knobs you're handling the ball with your hands you know he always asked for the ball in and see if they were sweat on the ball they knew that they'd been working at decent intensity and again you know that arguably is as valid as any quantifiable measure of intensity or hardness or especially in the days of the leather ball where it might have absorbed a little bit more right so that could have been heavier as well maybe so that's right that's right so he's probably yeah he probably had some good experience there so if we if we spin that on the positive a little bit obviously sports science has a fantastic role to play again whether that's the sort of more S&C focus or whether that's in the psychological or any other some areas of science but where do you think a sport scientist can be most effective in supporting a coach within either development or performance environments whichever paradigm you'd like to sort of dive into? I like I'm hearing a bit in terms of naturally it was I was listening to a podcast this week with Wayne Smith so obviously wouldn't need any introduction to Dave but yeah well probably most one of the most highly regarded coaches in the Rapid Union in the world heavily involved obviously in the All Blacks for a long period of time and Wayne was over I think he's in Japan at the moment maybe club rugby there he's talking about they're trying to help their sport scientists to see themselves more as coaches as in they're there to coach and help the players and even you know exposing them so coaching degrees or coach development and education opportunities so I think this idea of yeah how of seeing yourself there to help the players and again I'll use it with rather than control the players but where else get going wrong in it especially with technology and there's actually been some papers published now kind of really concerned I guess with these technocratic approaches to really just try and control players and take away autonomy and freedom and when we talk about self-awareness of coaches is restricting the players abilities and seeking young players abilities to become more either aware of what they capable of become more attuned to use an ecological term so I think that's the role of sport scientists it's just as it is to coaches is to help particularly these young players to understand their capabilities and their bodies and how much they can push themselves and where their limits are and the time using technology absolutely can facilitate that awareness but again I think the misstep is when I override that and it's essentially then the high performance manager or the SNC coaches making decisions on you've done enough you're out there's just no educational aspect at all to the player there in their development. Yeah really I've certainly marked down to have a listen to that Wayne Smith that Wayne Smith podcast there with Russell Earnsure I believe that'll be a great conversation I think it's fantastic to see something of that caliber appearing on a podcast to help coaches are really really interesting in terms of you know you sort of touched on the fact that the sport scientist as a coach is critical and I couldn't agree more I've certainly had conversations with sport scientists around that as you know we're all here to help the players how do we use our skills here to do that. Do you think there's a time I guess in development or sport spaces where it is too early to start pushing us down in terms of testing and measuring and that kind of thing or do you think it could just be balanced a little bit at younger ages?
Yeah I think that young you go the more that needs to be a pretty robust conversation about what's the environment what's the really important things that's this idea of least subtractive so a guckavandrogen where we're within works in the UK in coach development yeah he wrote a blog post for us on being least attractive so it's really what do you leave out or what do you actually take out to make your environment better rather than keep adding in so again we've got the assumption again nine-year-olds we need to have video analysis we need to have S&C we need to have load monitoring we need to have nutrition maybe but maybe not maybe not yeah and again we actually have having some discussion and dialogue in the base about those things and ideally what do the kids think about all that as well again back to your strong ideas they ran it you know every individual different maybe some kids will love the video analysis nine-year-olds maybe others probably maybe not say it but as soon as they see a camera on them you know they just shut up and go back into their shell don't explore you know don't try things which is absolutely what you don't want obviously that age so i think it comes in how you frame it i mean i have had experience with young kids having access to their clips and generally the first thing will be that they're just generally excited to see themselves on camera they're excited to see themselves play i think there is an opportunity there if you're a clever analyst and we have had a couple of masterclass discussions with various analysts and academies is to have some fun with it and that whether that's putting in some mentoring or modeling clips or whether that's having some fun around maybe setting some targets and just observing and reflecting i think there's some value there but agree the younger it goes the more deserving it can get so it is that balancing act again yeah yeah to join and yeah the video analysis that i think we're again with from my experience because we're still missing a trick is using that as coaches to inform our practice design or just you know rather than we then need to use the video directly with the players maybe not again particularly younger players maybe not that often but what we can do either from observing training or or any formal match or competition is it informs you how the players getting on and how we might really shape and design that learning environment for them yeah very very good thought in terms of some practical advice for coaches and mark in conscious your time so just a couple of questions for you but some practical advice around you know let's say you're tuning into this discussion and you're a developing coach a young coach have you got some key advice that you would pass on in terms of how to hone the environment or what key focus it should be there when shaping the environment for young players? Probably the for that i think yeah if you're a young coach or kind of starting out on coaching it's always useful back again i guess this idea of self-awareness and starting that reflected process is why are you coaching really you know having that kind of deeper looking sense of yourself of what's really kind of driving me into this and why am i doing it? Let's make let's kind of separate out from you know the pair and coach who know what else is doing it so i've kind of booked my hand up and i'll have a go at it which is actually probably actually isn't it the dominant? yeah it's a lot of people are coaching is actually that context so that's interesting but if it is what people said i want to have a crack at coaching and see see what i can do i think that's the starting point yeah well why why are you doing it and then and then how do i want to end the best context for me to start to start working or practicing as a coach and i think from there i think um uh Maria Ruiz Deona who was the psychologist coach developer athletic who about for a number of years she's now a supplier i mean she talks about you know developing players or developing talent there will always demand of you more than you currently know or feeling like you need to pretend that you do know it all and i think probably the difficult i don't know being used again your thoughts on that day but maybe the difficult period of the first few years setting out coaching is you do have probably a lot of doubts that you probably feel like you need to portray that again you're in control you've got the answers you know exactly what you're doing absolutely yeah i couldn't agree more i can recall when i've said this a few times with the Ann on Q&A discussions that i can think back to things i did as an 18 19 20 year old coach and just cringe because i was doing what i what i sort of perceived to be was right i might have been doing what i'd seen through adults who'd influenced me as a player of course at that stage you don't have the knowledge of what coaching learning or teaching looks like but you're out there with good energy trying to do what you can to motivate or support or you know try and bring people together so i think naturally when coaches dive into it they'll probably have one or two attributes where they're fairly confident so that could be leadership or it could be game understanding but of course the fundamental question going back to why you're there ties in again with a quote from John Van Shipu's obviously coach diax and holand and worked at Melbourne City was it's always about the players and never about you and so that ego does mask the insecurity which is again a topic i've enjoyed writing on because i think it as coaches there can be a lot of swagger when you put that track suit on or you're standing in front of a group of people and everyone's looking at you as the coach they can oh yeah he's got the track suit on he knows what he's doing when in fact sometimes we've got to put our hand up in front of players and go yeah i didn't quite get that session right or stop we'll change it because i haven't set this up right and just show that vulnerability absolutely and i think if on most occasion probably the environment you're stepping through if you're starting out we'll be with younger people so you know if coaching is gets all the stuff we talk about pedagogy and skill acquisition around relationships if we truly stick to that then you know just continuing to pay attention so forming good relationship with the kids which also inevitably will therefore involve parents so i think starting out you know keeping that front of mind how to have a my forming good relationships with the kids strong at that personal level and then equally as well how can i how we interact with the parents and can i form some strong relationships and help them understand how i'm going to go about as a coach or we can all kind of be in it together to create the best environment we can definitely well look the last question i want to ask you mark is when we ask all of our masterclass contributors who come on for a conversation and you've probably touched on a couple of them already but just in short really what would you say are the key characteristics of effective coaches uh left back to the last one yeah i wanted to switch you up there give me more than a few weeks than a blog post yeah that's that's where the inspiration for the question came and uh and obviously we uh we like to sort of use that as a bit of a framework for a question so if you've got any thoughts go for it yeah i think we've got to pass on that back i think i think i think i think we'll go back to where the last point there about relationships yeah i think again very very easy to say um but yeah effective coaches you know it's kind of a again interest but some of the research or classes intra personal skills and knowledge understand yourself so awareness and interpersonal relationships so yeah i think they're they're they're a couple but that you know it's uh pretty key yeah i think if you if you can take self-awareness and their and relationship building is as a good couple of uh bits of advice there it's a nice way to finish so mark thank you so much for your time it's great to catch up again and just chat a little bit about the youth sporting space and some of your experience i thank you on behalf of the PDP community no i enjoyed it Dave any time excellent and we'll look forward to another play development project masterclass discussion very soon thanks for joining us on the play development project podcast you can follow us on twitter and instagram at player dp or find us on facebook don't forget to head over to play development project.com where you can sign up to our progressive coaching community and gain access to our wide variety of resources to help you in your coaching