Welcome to the Playa Development Project Podcast. My name is Dave Wright and in this fascinating and in-depth conversation I had the pleasure of hosting International Hockey Coach, researcher and coach developer at Oxford Brooks University, Danny Newcomb. Danny is a senior lecturer, coach developer and skill acquisition expert at Oxford Brooks. He's a leading hockey coach and Danny was part of the coaching team for the Welsh means hockey team which recently attended the Commonwealth Games in Australia.
Danny and I discuss a wide range of topics around skill acquisition, constraints based coaching, creating a learning environment, the coaching spectrum and more. This is a must listen interview with a true innovator and thought leader in coaching. We pick the conversation up on the topic of performance versus development environments and practice design. Enjoy the conversation and don't forget to head over to Playa Development Project.com and check out the masterclass discussion section for the full conversation.
Just sort of the final question around your performance side and you talk about there are differences perhaps between a development and a performance environment. You've had that experience, now whether a middle was your performance indicator going out there or whether it was to win an extra amount of games. How did you sort of frame that with the players in terms of okay well we're going to this huge event, we're going to this tournament with the underdogs. How do you frame that with the players to say what is success?
Yes and that's something Zach and I had to talk to a lot about how to reframe this. Some of our analysis going in was like will we be a bit risk averse or will we play within our shells a bit? When we played these types of teams previously four years ago we didn't retain the ball for long enough, we spent too long without it, we worked hard, we were organised but really we didn't get to put hold in the game and one of our big things. So I was kind of an easy self at this one so it was going our challenges to go and deliver 8-9 out of 10 and put it out there.
That's our job. Go and deliver our game at best and we'll see where we land which then immediately takes them away from going and going to score to sort of go and deliver the best performance as a group. We also sort of challenge one of my things I think changed them a little bit. I kind of asked them what's the point of sport, like why are we here?
Like why are we flying halfway around the world to play hockey? It's a good risk matter when you really think about it. It's absolutely matter. Why are the money that goes into it the time and all this sort of stuff and when you start going well why are we here?
Because if no one was watching we wouldn't be here. So the key is that we got to entertain. That sport is entertaining. People pay to watch because they enjoy the entertainment.
So when people pay there I'll see dollars to walk through to the gate. This is the 7,000 people. When they were watching our jobs entertain them. So go out there and entertain them and give them an experience where they go wow hockey is amazing.
I want to watch hockey and my kids to play hockey and people are coming up to us. People are never seeing hockey but I'm going to take hockey down the local club and I was like that. That's a big purpose isn't it? When you go back to that word of purpose that is a big purpose that is an ambassador for the sport right?
And in back home our job is for people to watch it and be inspired and want to play hockey because ultimately there the 20 guys who went away with it went there 20 well chalky players that are representing 20 blokes. What about the other people back home? Fishguard hockey club they've gone to pick up a stick because that's the bigger purpose of sport in my head I think. Yes winning and being successful makes the legacy and those sorts of things easier to promote.
It's easy to inspire people. With the GV women's hockey women in the gold medal and Rio that kind of really cat-and-end of being the netball team but obviously they're very well in the comos games. That would be a catalyst in that inspiration so win helps. And also you've got to look at why we individually do sport and coaching because it's mad when you think about it.
Trying to get a group of 20 blokes who are all different in a really stressful environment with loads of stuff that you can't control to be judged by one sport and you both can't win. You stop frame it that way round and you go and it's the challenges. It is the unpredictability. It is the drama.
I think that's the way I've got the position of the guys is get tactical stuff they're brilliant at and physicals they've done the prep now. This is the fun bit co-hand. I think it's a really nice way to frame it in terms of that purpose and obviously a nice way to look at it and I've got to say whether it's the performance end of the point in the game. I've seen that kind of anxiety with under 10s under 12s under 14s and that kind of stress as well whether it's parents or external influences.
So really really interesting. Look the areas of skill acquisition and constrained league coaching are obviously topics that you cover a lot both in your work at Oxford Brooks and your work in your own coaching practice. These are areas where you're considered to be an expert in this area. So can you elaborate a little bit on your interpretation of what these terms mean to you and some of the common misunderstandings around particularly constrained league coaching and obviously skill acquisition as well.
Yeah yeah how long have you got? So a little bit of like a journey for me was I say this to our students who are battling with this stock because it's not easy again. Some of the concepts are like okay I get it doing it's actually more difficult than it and that's part of the fun. But you know I was still clapping cones on the floor and getting people to dig around them at the age of 26.
So you guys are 18, 19, 19, 19 starting your journey into these conversations and discussions you know like relax and you won't get this at 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years but you know let's get into it. And it started with me because I was coaching the Windows National League team and they were doing lots of technical work and they were getting better and better and better and like wow I'm like a physier and like consistency on it passing and trapping into the game. Still can't attend me a possibility. And that was kind of a real like what we're doing and we're getting better at something and training but it's not making us better at the game and that was a massive huge discussion in my head of them and the moment where I really reflected them when maybe what we're doing in training isn't that effect at all.
That's search for knowledge transfer right? That's the big thing. What question I asked myself as a coach or a coach or a coach who doesn't have a coach or a coach or a doctor's attention to this session. What do you want them to get better at what's the development you want?
Okay will it transfer? We haven't really tried measuring it. That's my PhD. And it is that decisions are made as the art I guess.
But there's some stuff we can make sure that it's an environment that means it's probably more likely to transfer with those games and then so that kind of drew me to kind of non-linear pedagogy and the similar work of New Orleans, David's and those guys and sort of really getting into that stuff and then which led me to all constraint set approaches and really delving into that and now you know that that's it really drives everything I do with the kind of systems approach, ecological type of stuff. And there's lots of big words and I think that's part of the problem that there's a big sort of theory to practice gap that's kind of hard to navigate. A lot of the papers are really written in for academic, and that's what academic papers are. They're written for academics.
It's research and that kind of transfer. It starts happening and you know Keith talks to me a lot about you. You sit between them too. That's what we need when you guys are a practical and theoretical.
We can work with stuff now that's going to sit but a bit of jargon busting and myth busting and what I enjoy the most. So on the phrase you've always been using a constraint to the approach. You just didn't know it. So a constraint set approach captures how human beings organise movement solutions.
That's not a magic bullet of you need to use these practices or not. It just helps us understand how a human being organises its body to solve the problem. And that that organisation is a product of the task of walking upstairs, the human, so the anatomy, the biomechanics, the muscles, the psychology, the mood, the fatigue stakes, so everything that kind of fits into that human and then the environment. And all the constraints that approach is saying is that when one of those changes, the movement solution changes.
And as long as coaches we know that, we can then start to change some of the things to cause the movement solutions we want to happen. It's almost an awareness or a consciousness of these ideas and then trying to think how is that relevant for that individual and my environment, I guess, right? Yeah, it's right. Two people might be very different in shape and size, of course.
So that then movement solutions to solve the problem will look and be potentially different. That doesn't mean one's right or one's wrong, but that's what will happen. And so it's all built on this premise of two things, really, dynamical systems theory, which I'm really excited about. But basically, the system's always searching for stability.
That's the answer. So we'll try and self-organize as the big phrase, which basically means problems solve, work it out, call it what you want. But the body will try and step organizes or the human will step organizes against the instability in the system, always looking for that stability. So as a human, we start to, our center of mass moves off to the base, but the body's stable position to be in is upright, up with our center of mass over our feet.
We're in defense in rugby, for example, and transition, we will organize ourselves to be stable. So we're set, we're positioned, we're covered, and that's a stable solution to the problem. So the key is, as coaches, to provide instability. You provide instability that learners will self-organize against it and come up with solutions.
So that's the first thing, if we know our jobs to provide instability, now how much, what type of instability that those are the types of questions that we might get into. So often, I say, if you put cones down on the floor, an article players to dribble around them in, which is common practice and still rocky and in ice hockey and in football, in soccer, they will create a movement solution that solves that problem, i.e. looking at the floor. And you always say the big problem with players on the dribble, the ball is they don't look up.
I say, well, who put the cones on the floor? I see. And they sort of look at me. And they've solved the problem, you've set them, you've created this instability, you've got to here to here.
And then they say to the player, just do that, but look up. And I just want to six-yard to say, you're mad. Yeah, the planes on the floor pass. You don't want me to look at them?
What are you saying? So I'm not saying drills are bad, there's good drills. And there's bad, and I'm not a fan of block practice and queues, and there's good games and there's bad games as well. So it's not arguing about drills versus games.
It's an argument around, is the movement solutions for players playing, will they transfer? Are they going to be useful when they play the game? So even a step forward to mannequins and polls are upright better than putting cones on the floor. I still don't fully agree with that.
But why can't we just put them in a box with a load of other humans that are moving, give them a ball each and ask them to dribble around, and they start bumping into each other, they'll start to self-organise and get their heads up. All that's keeping an interference practice on that coaching spectrum, which obviously we'll get to. Yeah, exactly right. So understanding that humans will always organise against instability based on the environment and them, we're kind of in a good place.
And then there's this other theory which is called ecological psychology. So it basically talks about the role in the environment in shaping our decisions and movements and interactions. A really nice quote from Keith Davis was, we wouldn't be able to adapt an environment, we never inhabit. So we wouldn't realise our ability to swim if we weren't giving your opportunity to interact with water.
So our job as coaches is to just provide loads of environments for our players to inhabit and adapt in. If we've played them with the environment with the Coruscum, the Green Point, correct in viruses with bad environments that are rich and game-like and having the right amount of instability in dynamic and contextual, then they'll adapt and inhabit those environments and learn to be in them. One of my favourite throwaways is if dynamical systems, or it doesn't chuck the child in the swimming pool, walk away in dynamical systems, they may trap. Our job is to actually coach as well and help learners in those environments.
What if Timmy's holding a stick around their hand or something? Yeah, 100% of the skill of place to coach, right? Yeah, that's what's happened a little bit over here, is you can't possibly tell anyone anything. Your environment needs to be game-like and have to have decisions within it.
It needs to be rich, but you can still help him coach. What we're saying is don't put Timmy in the shallow end until he puts his feet down, because he solved the problem and you set him. Setting up a problem that's just outside is kind of dead, where he feels like that safe amount of uncertainty. But he's forced to create a movement solution that he doesn't already have to solve the problem.
He's got, that's not chucking in 3-meter deep diving pool and then say, I've organized that the way out of that part. That's one of the key tenets. But the key messages, I guess, are create instability as a coach, that kind of sweet spot. Create the right instability where they're organizing against it, to solutions that are going to be helpful when they play the game.
That doesn't mean we do unopposed practices. And it doesn't do games either. So we said we can talk about the spectrum, but that I think that's the key bit. The continuum of the practices is a big decision for coaches, I think.
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