This foundational textbook summarised the key theoretical ideas that underpin a constraints-led methodology for sports pedagogy principles for designing learning environments for athletes, considered as nonlinear dynamical systems, in individual and team sports. Our aim in this book was to summarise current understanding of key ideas from ecological psychology, dynamical systems theory, evolutionary biology and the complexity sciences, which might inform the work of coaches, teachers and sport scientists in seeking to understand performance, learning design and the development of expertise and talent in different sports. In later chapters of the book we attempted to illustrate how practitioners might use a constraints-led methodology to achieve their practical goals. The book sets the scene for more detailed descriptions in the series that exemplify how practitioners use the methodologies of the constraints-led approach in a nuanced way to prepare athletes for performance, elicit skill and improvements during training and develop talent in individuals.
Some important messages emerged in the book that are worth re-emphasising in this concluding chapter for readers to act as a bridge for us to negotiate in the link to the forthcoming book series. Here we summarise some of the main, take-home messages:
1 The ecological dynamics rationale is really worth understanding in all its detail for sports practitioners to gain the most that they can from using the constraints-led methodologies and the nonlinear pedagogy approach in sport. A thorough understanding of key theoretical ideas and concepts would lead to a more nuanced application of constraints-led methodologies in sport performance preparation and practice. The four principles developed in this book provide a framework to apply key ideas of ecological dynamics. This is an initial and important attempt to help practitioners apply key theoretical ideas to their work using a constraints-led methodology. The framework allows sports practitioners to be more systematic and thorough in their consideration of the key features of this approach.
2 A provocative point to emerge in the book is that perhaps sports practitioners should consider themselves to be ‘learning designers’, regardless of whether they work at a sub-elite, developmental or elite level. The descriptor of learning designer emphasises that athletes at all levels are still on a learning journey, albeit at different parts of the expertise trajectory. The term learning designer also places an emphasis on the importance of harnessing task and environmental constraints by helping each individual athlete to explore landscapes of affordances to utilise relevant opportunities for action. These ideas fit well with the chapter in this book summarising the role of the coach as an environment designer. Sports practitioners are architects of a learning experience.
3 Related to the message above, the pedagogical principles behind a constraints-led methodology has relevance for use with athletes of all abilities (able-bodied and those with disabilities), as well as children, adults (sub-elite and elite) and elderly individuals (at master’s level performance).
4 The foundational text, taken together with the book series, shows the relevance of the constraints-led methodologies for designing learning opportunities for athletes in different sports and physical activities, regardless of the specificities of each performance environment. The key underlying principles, addressed in the initial chapters, remain the same regardless of whether the athlete is engaged in an individual sport like open water swimming, ice climbing, springboard diving or parkour, or is performing as part of a team, such as in relay events of running, cycling and swimming, and ball sports.
5 Sport practitioners should avoid stereotyping the language of constraints with negative connotations (that may exist in everyday communication). It’s worth re-iterating here that the term constraints, used in this book series, has a special meaning in applied science, generally referring to a source of information (related to personal characteristics, tasks and environmental features) that can be used to regulate behaviours in performance and practice. Adopting a neutral interpretation of the concept of constraints, as information that regulates athlete behaviours, will help sport practitioners appreciate the subtlety and nuance needed in getting the most out of applying this methodology in performance preparation and practice. Related to a nuanced appreciation, application of constraints in learning tasks should not be viewed as a magic bullet that will automatically lead to intensive learning. Poor application of a CLA and ineffective learning designs are no better in enhancing learning than poorly conceived traditional practices that advocate constant repetitions and movement reproduction for all individuals. Under-constraining and over-constraining practice tasks are problems that can be avoided with more knowledge, understanding and experience as sport practitioners.
6 In this book and the ensuing book series, a key message is: know the athlete. Movement organisation in athletes and teams has a history. This is important to understand since it should shape the interactions a coach has with his/her athletes. This point is highlighted by the work of Pete Arnott in Chapter 8, who spends significant time ‘interrogating the athlete to understand why movements are the way they are’. This information is relevant to the language used by a sports practitioner. It also highlights why there is no one optimal solution to a performance problem. History reveals itself in the performance solutions that emerge from a learner.
7 Sport practitioners need to be mindful of the importance of intentions to frame a practice task. Understanding how to influence the ‘intentionality’ of an athlete during training (for example, in the sport of ice climbing, designing a scenario for climbers to ascend a surface quickly or securely), provides a relevant purposefulness to training, which reveals an obvious focus on process during performance and not just the mechanical achievement of outcomes. Furthermore, in team games practice, infusing a practice task with intentionality leaves no room for players to simply go through the motions in the small-sided practice games. Intentions can be used to shape the representativeness of learning designs and emphasises the need to consider the relationship between purpose and consequences in task design. Of course, this emphasis on intentionality helps athletes and sport practitioners explore links to the interactions of cognition, perceptions and actions.
8 Representative learning design (RLD) does not signify that sport practitioners have to design practice tasks that incorporate all features of competitive performance all the time. It is a fundamental misconception of a nonlinear pedagogy that successful application of constraints involves learning under full competitive performance conditions all the time. Of course, learning can occur during competition. But an important challenge for sport practitioners is to understand how to design representative learning environments, by manipulating task constraints, that each learner needs at that moment in his/her development. The new RLD dial built into the session planner provides a framework to deliberately consider how much RLD sport practitioners and athletes are seeking to co-create. For example, use of the dial encourages sport practitioners to consider how much variability is appropriate for learners to explore in a particular practice context in order to enhance adaptive behaviours. Such a perspective allows learners to exploit inherent self-organisation tendencies under constraints as a design feature. Task simplification is an appropriate method when designing practice tasks, for example, at the beginner level. Conversely, more experienced athletes may need to practise in highly specific practice environments as much as possible, since attunement to key information sources and key affordances is absolutely necessary. For example, if a baseball short stop needs to throw a runner out, that runner needs to be present in practice.
Over the past two decades an important contribution of the constraints-led research has been to enhance understanding of theory and application in the acquisition of skill and expertise in sport. This is an ongoing focus for sport practitioners to develop their understanding of how to get the best out of the rich methodological landscape that comprises the constraints-led approach to sport pedagogy. The challenge for contributors in the ensuing book series is to communicate in an engaging and meaningful way how sport practitioners may use the rich framework of the constraints-led approach to enhance the quality of practice in developmental and elite sport programmes. The book series provides an opportunity for us to engage more deeply with the evidence-based practice and the experiential knowledge of skilled practitioners involved with elite and developmental sport performance programmes.
The book series represents an exciting opportunity to explore the excellence in innovation and creativity of skilled and knowledgeable practitioners using constraints-led, sport practice and training programmes around the world. The book series seeks to give a voice to those practitioners who are willing to share their evidence-based practice in order to improve the quality of practical and applied work in sport from recreational, through developmental, to elite performance levels. An additional goal of this book series is to support the development of nonlinear pedagogy through the provision of practical exemplars that will enable readers to understand how the key principles underpin current practice in a variety of sports. It is worth noting that readers can gain a lot from learning how a constraints-led approach has been applied in different sports, which may or may not be related to their own area of sport expertise. It is the knowledge and skill in applying the constraints-led methodologies in a nuanced manner, regardless of specific context, and the implications of understanding the athlete and collective as an inherently nonlinear, complex adaptive system, which will yield rich insights for sport practitioners, seeking to become the best that they can. We take the opportunity to thank the book series contributors again for sharing their knowledge and understanding. There may be differences of opinion in how constraints manipulations are organised and applied. There are likely to be suggestions for how to modify practice task designs. That is to be expected because the theoretical rationale and the practical applications and utility of the constraints-led approach to skill acquisition, performance preparation and talent development will likely change, be updated and revised. The take-home message here is that sport practitioners need to perceive themselves as critical consumers, exploring and searching for solutions, asking questions, and facing challenges in the use of constraints-led methodologies. Sport practitioners, like athletes, should be ready to search, explore and exploit information and solutions in the quest to be the best that they can be. In this respect our area of applied science and practice should be viewed as a truly dynamic system.