Purposeful Play with Dr. Craig Harrison

Hi everyone, this is Dave Wright and welcome to the Play Development Project podcast. I hope you have a great week working with your players. Now before we get into today's discussion, as usual, a brief regap on the latest content to come out on Play Development Project.com. First off, we just published a brilliant masterclass discussion with sport psychologist Dan Abrahams.

This conversation was almost two hours long, it's essential viewing for coaches and it was a highly enjoyable discussion to be a part of. We've also published a new blog on coach communication from Professor Stephen Roelnick. Now Stephen's a clinical psychologist who has pioneered motivational interviewing and the article is called How Many Times Should I Tell You. In this piece, Stephen challenges traditional coach communication and his work really is his first class, so I highly recommend this one.

Finally, we've had a top research review on the constraintslet approach from Professor William A. Harper. Last week, and this has received some great feedback online, so check that one out on the site now. As a side note, we'll also be bringing some new PDP live sessions to the website for members very soon.

Last week, I spent a couple of days away doing some filming with a grassroots club in Northern New South Wales, Australia, called Byron Bay Football Club. That was a highly enjoyable experience, so thanks to the players and staff at Byron Bay FC for their time. And the idea with these sessions was really to work with some players at a mixed ability to grassroots level in a very realistic scenario and provide some practical sessions for you to implement or look at and adapt for your players. We anticipate the first of these new live sessions to be published on the site sometime in October, so watch this space.

In today's podcast, we share half an hour of our Masterclass discussion titled Purposeful Play with Dr. Craig Harrison. Craig is a research fellow from Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. He's an expert in youth athlete development and he supports young athletes with fundamental movement.

Now, Craig's also got a strong background in strength and conditioning, and he's the host of the Athlete Development Show, a podcast designed to showcase experts in the youth sporting space. Today, Craig and I dive into a number of topics including learning environments, performance narratives in youth sport, strength and conditioning in youth sport, movement and mobility, the power of play and much more. A huge thanks to Craig for his time and for the full 65 minute conversation, head to play developmentproject.com and access the Masterclass discussion section. As usual, a quick reminder that if you haven't signed up to become a PDP member, we have monthly or annual membership options as well as club partnership options available at play development project.com, so you can sign up and access all of our top coaching content including the brand new PDP Slack community which is going from strength to strength.

Finally, if you get a chance to leave us a review for the podcast and I really hope you enjoy today's conversation. Hi everyone, my name is Dave Wright and welcome to another Play Development Project Masterclass discussion. I'm Dr. Craig Harrison, a research fellow at AUT in Auckland, New Zealand and a youth sport researcher in the sport science space working across a number of codes.

Craig, how are you? Good, Dave, good to be on. Really excited to have you on now. I hope I sort of got the introduction as good as I could because you're doing a fair bit of work across a few spaces both in the research, both in terms of delivering with AUT and of course doing some of your own work across codes.

So can you give us a bit of a background as to your experience in sport and coaching and some of the work you're up to? Yeah, for sure. I think you're pretty sharp with the intro. I've got a few different roles at this point but it's been a bit of time in the research space.

So I look after a group of postgraduate students here in Auckland with AUT University, specifically looking at the aspects of youth athlete development. It's quite a diverse range of students which is nice, but we're sharpening. That vision up is we move forward and the movement skill within youth sport is a big interest of ours. So there's lots going on in that space and then I'm also out there working as a coach with different programs within our facility.

So athletes will come in and look at the developments of their mental and psychosocial skills. We work with sporting orgs, schools and just general pop that come in and just supporting athletes to think about their holistic development. And then my other role really is around sort of more strategy when it comes to environments and how they may be designed in order to support the holistic developments of specific groups of athletes. Certainly a broad range of work and lots of the areas you're talking about are sort of right up our alley in terms of the PDP message and a lot of the content we've created and had a lot of guest experts contribute.

We'll start off with the sort of non-linear journey and the rocky road of youth development. I mean we know it's a non-linear process in terms of developing athletes and particularly in the youth space. So can you talk to us on your view as to what and how best to create an environment that lends itself to skill acquisition and coordination? Yeah, we're going to start with a massive question.

It's super topical at this point out there amongst the research fraternity amongst our coaches and practitioners and many people are trying lots of different things which is really exciting and we've been playing with these ideas for probably nearly a decade with one of our programs that we run here. We're kids at the age of seven and eight come in and do some physical development with us and really we've got to is we design environments for play where kids can come and explore their own movement where they can solve all sorts of different problems where they can level up challenges where they can regress challenges where we think about what we might be able to put in front of a young athlete from a physical challenge point of view and really see how they can negotiate that challenge based on their movement story as we would call it. What we have seen is athletes that come and see us and their movement stories are really diverse so by that I mean what have they experienced, what are those environments that have spent time in throughout their development from really ages right through to where they are the current day. So we spend a bit of time trying to understand that story and then sort of allow them to engage in the types of challenges that might be able to take that story to the next level.

So it's really an athlete-centered approach. We came from a traditional decency model where the coach programs, the athletes work and they work through it whereas now we spend much more time going well. What does the athlete need from a physical point of view from a social point of view? How are they motivated to engage in an environment that is for them?

And then we set the environment up around that to allow them to one stay motivated to keep coming back. But two really understand how the physical piece connects into the sports specific piece because that's a really key one for us. It's like, well, how does doing this work help me to be better in my game, whether that's in football or as a surfer or whatever we work across a number of different sports. And we've thought really hard about how we can help them to see what they're doing in that physical space as just a piece of the puzzle and an important piece but something that they can sort of believe to be supportive and not just something that happens on the sideline.

I do my strength and conditioning and then I'm going to go and play the sport. We see them as hugely connected. And so as much work we can do to create a truly integrated approach is something that we're really passionate about figuring out. Sounds really interesting.

And you talked about a variety of sports a bit about the study around you talked about play. So in your view, how much are you trying to integrate the idea of play or an opportunity to explore? And does this vary across age groups in terms of the approach? Yeah, so we use play a lot and four in a number of different reasons.

One being from a fundamentally sort of human point of view, players how young people learn and how they connect the dots between certain ideas and the types of things that they want to work towards moving forward. So that environment is very play based for all out for our young kids. So we work from seven and eight as I said right through to the end of high school. So our junior group is pretty much just purposeful play where they'll come in and like I said, explore a number of different challenges.

And then that play will continue right through to our kids that are 16 and preparing to transition into the next phase of high form sport. And then so the play provides us an opportunity where we can look into how they move, how they solve different problems. And then it's always the place that we will start in order to figure out what we can do to support their physical growth. So if they're solving a problem in a particular way and we look at that and being if these areas around potential injury that we see, then we might layer in specific strength and conditioning that will allow them to have a buffer between this or and potential injury.

If they're doing certain solving particular challenges in certain ways and we want to add a particular component of fitness to that, so if we want them to move faster, if we want them to have more physical resilience while doing that particular problem, then we will then program in the more traditional agency stuff to allow them to have those abilities. So we kind of flip the narrative on its head as opposed to thinking, well, this is the requirements of the sport. And in order to keep there, we need to start with building fundamental physiological components, which I think it's the other way round. We go, well, the sport is what it is that we're trying to facilitate progress and development in.

So we actually need to see them moving in a representative design. And then we can have a conversation about progressing that forward to help them be better in that environment. Yeah, so this is really interesting in the sense that I know you've done a little bit of work in the football space and I'm sure it's been across codes as well, around ensuring realism in terms of building a fitness space. So you're talking about using the game essentially to replicate and create movement and also a fitness component that is relevant to the game.

I mean, as simple as that? Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely a good place to think about where it starts. And for a number of different reasons, both from a specificity point of view from how an athlete moves within that context, from a motivational point of view. So to allow someone to understand how the different pieces of the puzzle connect to the performance out on the grass.

Yeah, so it is using the game in terms of that particular concept to increase the likes of endurance, the acceleration of the mark and those types of components. But it's also using the game to actually understand how we can create an environment to facilitate the right sort of adaptation. And if we think about that non-linear approach, which we spend a lot of time playing with in the current age, then it's also the ability for a player to adapt particular solutions when they do go out there and try and perform. So traditionally, we'll look at things like movement screens and there will be that will sort of direct people towards the right way of moving.

So we've flipped that a little bit as well. So we have limits of potential endress movement. And we don't want athletes to have huge knee valgas, for example, or we don't want them to have excessive lumbar spine issues when they're moving. But that being said, we also want a lot of the variety in their movement.

So we're not so fast about where the feet are and really concise ways of moving because when they go out there, their ability to move in a whole bunch of different ways we believe is actually going to allow them to be more adaptable and solve the problems that they see on a moment to moment basis when they're playing. You've talked about sort of integrating S&C or integrating sports science as such into the environment and a few examples there of making sure it looks like whatever game it is that is being trained or being played. So the question I guess is how can an effective sports science or strength and conditioning coach add real value to a development environment when they come in and get involved? What are some of the key ingredients that you think they should be adding?

Yeah, so I think there's a couple of pieces. There's one, if you're working within a specific environment, you've got to know the game and you've got to understand how players are expected to move within that context. So there's been a lot of time in my high performance journey before I got into working with youth and there's particular types of movements that are required in that game in order to do the things that they're being asked to do. And so we need to understand the game really well and then to be able to use the language and to translate that into the strength and conditioning context and working with young players.

And then we get we forget that they play because they love the game. And so when we go with our strength and conditioning, we say we need to take them right back to fundamentals. So our first objective is to get them moving really nicely through a squat and a lunge in these sort of fundamental gym movements. And we forget that they're 14 and they play the game because they love to play and they love how it feels.

And so they come into a gym environment and we get them to do this really abstract type of stuff. And then they question one, what's it really for? And then six months down the track, they check out because they don't see the relevance. So we think about how we structure our sessions.

So we're always rotating through sort of game-like scenarios or specific scenarios to the sport that you're involved in and then back into more fundamental work. So we're not neglecting their ability to actually have those big rocks. But we're also always translating it back to the game because that's why they're there, right? And we can sometimes get in the way of athletes because we think this idea of strength and conditioning is more important than it may actually be.

So that's important for us to think about that. And then I think the other thing too is to understand development. To understand how movement comes about from day one. So that's been a real revolution for me and I've connected with a couple of guys over in the US that are really sort of deep thinkers in the space around how development informs what we do from a scale acquisition point of view.

So what happens for a young child and how do they acquire movement? So the fundamental elements of acquiring movement and then how can we translate that into the work that we do in sport. And that's been a really interesting journey for me and answered some of the some questions that I've had in my head for a long time now going, well, it doesn't quite make sense to me. You know, talking through some of the stuff has been really cool.

And obviously a lot of coaches or potentially parents who are listening or watching this particular discussion may not be in the luxury of having a sport science team. So we're probably being a little bit presumptuous in the environment as most people work on. But if they're under, say, grassroots coaches or local clubs that are looking to do, I guess implement some kind of sport science or strength and conditioning program or include some fitness elements. I mean, what practical advice would you have in terms of some initial steps?

I mean, we've talked about it being representative of the game. But are there any other things you would advise people to sort of consider when they start applying some of these ideas in their own programs? Yeah, for sure. So we think about move often before moving well.

So if you think about a library full of movements skill that you can then draw on in order to solve particular movement challenges, right? So in football, if someone's having to jump high of the opposition, send it back to header or on goal, then that's going to be a slightly different solution they're going to solve every time. So if they're having to get over someone, if they're having to go around someone, if they're having to jump slightly off center, then if we give young people more experiences in moving, then we believe that they're going to be able to draw on the specific solution that they need with better adaptability when they're presented with that problem, right? So how you think about doing that is think less about specific exercises and more about how much opportunity you can give them to move in lots of different ways, which is why play is so brilliant.

So we use constraints around different types of landing, different types of jumping, different types of rolling, swinging, flipping, twisting, all of the stuff. And if you come and see one of our sessions for our junior group, you'd look at it and go, what are you coaching? And the answer is well, nothing because we don't need to. We just go, here's the environment, go at it, fill your boots.

But once you can, in appearance, have struggled with that, because often, you know, there's this transaction economy we're living in now where parents go, well, at least I can understand what I'm getting from my money, then I'm not going to turn up and open my wallet. So there's been a little bit of work we've had to do from an educational point of view, but it literally just is purposeful play. So we want to give them those different buckets of different movements, but we want to do it in a way that's very unstructured, which you can imagine a quates to a crap load of fun and challenge. And we think about how many times in a session we can get an athlete to think about, I'm not sure if I'm capable, but I'm going to walk towards that challenge.

So that's true development of resilience, right? We're actually doing some of that stuff. We're putting kids in positions of having to make decisions around risk, all of this stuff that people talk about, but putting into practice is much harder to do. Yeah, I think firstly, I feel like you're alluding to repetition without repetition and this kind of concept of getting a lot of opportunity to explore something, but every time there's going to be some variability within that.

And secondly, I think the challenge around, I guess, what we see as coaches or what parents are observing and the expectation that it should look linear and structured and from A to B to C in order to look good, I think there can be an obsession with aesthetically pleasing sessions and expecting youth athletes to replicate perhaps what we believe the game looks like at the end of the journey, whether that's at all local club football or whether that's the professional game using football as an example, obviously. I think there is that obsession. So are you sort of working in that space to try and not, I guess, sell the idea, but just encourage people to accept a little bit of chaos and uncertainty is a good thing? Yeah, yeah, that's part of the education that we're doing and we do it through the movement space.

So I mean, I'm not an expert in any specific sport. I played a whole bunch growing up, but that's not what I do. So we translate some of the messages through the development of athleticism and within that, the development of some of the key psychosocial skills that are going to be beneficial regardless of the sport that a young person is playing. So if we can do that through our context, then potentially some of that may transition from Antiver to other areas, but it's hard because you're flipping the narrative.

All of a sudden you're saying, doing the drills and repeating the same stuff, that's not what we want to be doing to help your young athlete be better. That's not what development is about. So that's a deeply rooted belief for a lot of people that you're flipping on its head, right? And it's a real challenge.

Yeah, it takes time and it is an education piece, I think. So I want to dive into this. I think some of the ideas we're sort of talking about here involve the sort of performance narrative seeping into youth sport. And I think there's a lot of talk around the word elite.

It's a word that I don't particularly like when you're talking about young players. I don't think anyone's really elite until they're at the top of their game and the performance team, maybe in a career or in the best in their field. And I think those performance narratives are getting younger and younger. We talk about sport science and S&C getting younger and younger.

And personally, I have my questions about that. So when it comes to, I guess, premature professionalism and these ideas coming down the age groups and the expectation of what sports looks like or what training looks like or what fitness looks like, what are your sort of thoughts around this issue? Yeah, it's really hot topic, mate. We're just currently working with one of my PhD students.

He's also a part of one of the local clubs here in the North Shore in Auckland. And he's leading the football development within that club. So and we're going through this journey of challenging that idea of premature professionalism and why we're always sort of now thinking about working towards what happens on Saturday. And that's the penultimate, whereas it didn't never used to be about that.

The game was just playing on Saturday. It was just the path of the whole experience. And the Tuesday and the Thursday night practice was like, that was the thing in itself. You look forward to it and it was all this fun and all this stuff and this relatedness with your mates.

And now it's like, well, I've just got to go to practice so I can do what I need to do to get to Saturday to do the real stuff. And I think that's problematic because people are checking out because when they turn up on Tuesday, they're not getting the experience that they may expect in order to get the outcome. So and we've got problems with motivation around this. We've got engagement issues.

We've got overload issues because it's this belief that's come with it that the more we can pack into our schedules, the better we're going to be on Saturday. So I think they did the heart of a lot of these other issues, a lot of these problems, for example, with the massive increase in injuries that we're seeing. And so we have to sort of really deconstruct the idea of kind of what is useful for before we can be able to solve some of these other really sort of hot topic issues that are going on currently. So do you think it's a case of reframing the match that experience is just part of an extension and another opportunity to learn?

I mean, this is something personally I believe that every game is an opportunity to learn. Unfortunately, things like lead tables and parental expectations or the pressure of status and these kind of things, which are all the research that Jimmy Barnes done a lot of work on can really influence the fact that game day becomes a whole new pressure and even coach behavior can change. I mean, coaches have to be consistent in their approach. I imagine that would be a fairly, fairly obvious one.

But is it a case of reframing what game day is about? Yeah, I think that's one sort of path you could take. Another would be just to play more during practice. So let's not sort of prescribe practice as this place where you need to go and do all this boring stuff and these drills and skills in order to get to the game.

Let's just turn up to practice and you play. And so all of a sudden, these experiences that you're getting in practice, they compare to what happens on Saturday and maybe the pressure dilutes a little bit because of it. Yeah, there's a number of different strategies, but definitely changing the narrative on what it's for and the types of experiences that we expect kids to get out of the different context that they're spending time in may help us to work towards ultimately. Kids that are spending more time in sport, having great experiences and staying active for the rest of their lives, which I think is ultimately what 99.5% of the kids are going to be doing, hopefully.

Yet everything's geared around that point, 0.5% that may actually make it. And the odds are not great. So that's right. Yeah, it's certainly very interesting.

And I think one thing you've touched on a couple of times is sort of the psych social elements in terms of relatedness and play and fun with their friends. I mean, how much do you think these environments just need to sort of go back to that concept? And how important is it just to, I guess as adults step back and go, well, we've talked about redefining a little bit of what it's about, but actually having a broader appreciation that skill acquisition of the physical side is one thing. But the whole experience and the interrelatedness and the interactions between players, coach, athlete relationship, athlete, coach, player to player and obviously any other sort of appearance and adults around the program is so crucial.

I mean, that experience at times can be lost in the practical or the physical stuff. I mean, do you believe that's a consideration for adults involved in youth sport? 100% and a little story. And I think it's somewhat neglected because it's not understood very well.

Like anything in life, if there's uncertainty around something, then we tend to push it aside and we go with the stuff that we know well. Or the expectation that we think we should be doing, right? So a grassroots coach who's looking after a bunch of 10-year-olds, the word coach on the back has got these implications that come with it, you know, that I should be coaching, that I should know the game, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, there are things like well, creating a good experience and what does that look like?

They're actually not that hard to process if you give it some time. I mean, like I mean, on this huge journey of the black and white, the physical science, you know, exercise physiology, the most important thing to me is the adaptation that we can get for an athlete to get them further, faster, stronger. That was my world for a long time. And then I got the opportunity to work with kids and we go in there and we're doing all the stuff and they're going, so what?

This is boring, you know? And then they show you what they're with their feet, right? Whereas adults play up with that shit. They're like, I'm going to come back.

This is really tedious and it's boring and I'm not having a good experience but I'm going to come back tomorrow because the world has told me that I'm kind of good at this stuff and if I throw this away, who am I then? So, but kids, they don't give you that room, right? They just go, nah, this is frat. I'm out here.

And so that kind of, that really slapped me in the face and I'm all of a sudden going, oh man, like if we want to help these guys to develop, then we need time with them. And the only way we can get time is we have to be the best hour of the day. And if we're not, then, and now we're living in a world that's just so much full of opportunity, full of distraction. So if we don't figure out, you know, giving kids good experiences, then we're done, right?

And it doesn't matter how much we know from a, you know, technical, tactical, physical point of view, then if we can't help them to understand what they find fun and we can't help them to develop meaningful relationships, then we're never going to be the coach that we think we could be.