HOW WE LEARN
“If we can create a culture where every teacher (coach) believes they need to improve, not because they are not good enough but because they can do even better, there is no limit to what we can achieve.”
– Dylan Wiliam
The following strategies combined with the Constraints Based Approach (CBA) can help our coaches, players and families better understand why player movement throughout the club is vital during their non-linear development process.
Player evaluation and placement are vital to one's enjoyment and development.
Bio-Banding reduces, if not removes entirely, the limitations caused by placing players based on birth days/years. It encourages coaches to focus on each individuals needs, it steers everyone's value towards the individual and away from the team success that can keep us from recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of each player.
Individual Vertical Integration (IVI) keeps us focused on the needs of the player by recognizing the correct learning environment for every player even when their needs or demands change. Examples of these learning environments could be teams, pools, training groups based on coaches' color-coded feedback.
Ecological Dynamics (Affordances) helps to create clarity in the creation and implementation of a CBA lesson plan while creating game-like situations that players have the autonomy and freedom to solve with minimal coaching. Adding affordances as a focal point will create clarity for the coach to the player due to the thought process required to create/coach such activities.
BIO-BANDING
In our never-ending quest to pursue and utilize innovative methods to ensure every player reaches their full potential in route to developing and identifying talent we make every effort to implement bio-banding in all that we do.
Bio-banding is a method by which players are grouped together based on their maturity and biological age rather than their birth year. By playing in groups based on biological age, the early developing players cannot rely solely on their physical advantages (speed and strength for example) to dominate the games the way they may be able to in a normal age-group match. For these players, they’re finally exposed to players of similar maturity and physicality. Therefore, the players must find new ways to succeed. They actually have to play more of a technical, tactical game; the game is usually required to slow down due to the demands that come with both the decision making and technical execution. When the physical advantages no longer allow a player to dominate the player is put in situations where problem solving becomes the primary source of success.
By focusing on techniques and tactics, early developing boys and girls can make sure they continue to refine and enhance all facets of their game so that when the rest of their age group catches up to them physically, they don’t just fall by the wayside.
For late developing players (late bloomers), bio-banding is an important measure to make sure they are not squeezed out of the highest levels of the game before they ever have a chance to learn the game. Bio-banded training and matches gives them more time on the ball in an environment more suitable for their current level. They have the ability to show that they are capable of commanding the game without bigger, faster and stronger players constantly precluding their involvement. Not only does this help the players to showcase their technical ability and the strides they are making in their development, but it allows coaches to evaluate players without being biased by their maturity level. This takes away the perception that players who mature early are more talented. It helps to identify and cultivate the best players irrespective of their maturity status.
For late developers who often end up playing with younger age group players in bio-banded games, they are offered the challenge of becoming a leader and mentor that is often precluded when they play in their normal age group.
If people are going to better understand this, education is key. During the early stages of a player involvement in soccer we provide programs and leagues that are structured in a way to make sure that we are implementing bio-banding. Multiple studies and our own experiences are proving that the method is working for all players. Mixed with a variety of soccer opportunities and purposeful player placement on teams, groups or pools we have witnessed players developing at their own pace without fear of falling behind and/or burning out.
For parents, we use Destination Soccer and our 5v5 Royalty Prep League to help prepare them for the organization of our U9-U12 Challenger League tams. It is also emphasized that if a player is behind, it’s often okay. Each kid develops along their own timeline and sometimes needs alternative environments to grow, even within the same structure, to be successful. Trying to remove the taboo of a player “playing down” as negative and a player “playing up” as positive is a key message that we want everyone to takeaway with them.
We want parents to see there’s involvement and thought behind the development of these kids and not just whatever is happening during their games.
To put it simply, this is a more intentional approach.
We want to tell the coaches who are developing the players that, the biggest gifts that you can give a player is time and patience. If you give them time to develop, if you give them the opportunity to have an individual environment to succeed, then every player, whether they’re playing on a Royalty team, in an introductory level program or anywhere between you will be creating the best environment for each of them to develop.
If we are going to positively affect the biases around maturity, we will have to consider that this is happening even earlier for the girls, the impact of this is happening even before they reach the “prioritization” years. Solutions, education and programming need to reflect this timing.
Even though it was discovered that girls are maturing quicker than boys, the girls academies have far more late developers than on the boy’s side. It is an outdated practice to have youth sport rosters dominated by early maturing players, but many still do it for the simplicity of glory on game day and the validation that the training approach is working. Games are commonly used as measuring sticks when they should be part of the learning process. We value competition differently than most because we are focused on the individual needs of our players rather than the outcome of games. Using the early developers to establish dominance is a very easy way to fool those that don’t know better or don’t care about every player on the field. Bio-banding helps us stay focused on our primary objective; the individual.
Bio-banding is producing fascinating results and presents excellent opportunities for both players and coaches alike, we want to stress that bio-banded training sessions and matches are just one component of a holistic approach to player development.
What we're hoping is that NUU coaches look at players in a slightly different way. Maybe NUU coaches will have increased confidence in their ability to develop players and not release a player or reduce interest in a player for being too small at under-14. The adults (parents and coaches) will give every player the opportunity to grow and make the physical gains that are going to naturally come anyway. Our full focus is to support coaches that ensure every player reaches their full potential and we believe that helping coaches and parents understand growth, maturation and development timing is necessary for players to thrive in our sport.
INDIVIDUAL VERTICAL INTEGRATION (IVI)
Individual vertical integration (IVI) is a commitment the club has made to each individual player. The focus on the individual is our top priority. As we accept that development is non-linear, understand bio-banding, long-term development and genuinely invest in prioritizing each child’s needs implementing IVI is a must.
IVI by nature is subjective. However, if the NUU coaching staff is committed to the needs of the player they will do their best to unemotionally place them within the NUU system and at times move them from their original placement to a different environment that should benefit the player. Occasionally, NUU will not be the right fit, in this instance the coaching staff will help the player find a place for them outside of the club.
Players unpredictably mature physically, cognitively, technically, tactically at different times. To be honest with our players and properly serve them, we must explain the possibilities of moving up or down from one team to another or get temporary invitations to participate with other teams/age group pools etc.
Players must understand the expectations when they accept a spot on a team and be prepared that if they excel, they will be encouraged to move to a more advanced environment and if they begin to fall behind their peers or are overwhelmed in their current environment that they might be moved to a less challenging environment to gain confidence, get more playing time or to have opportunities to be a leader.
With clear expectations from the three entities; club/coach, player, and parents, everyone can know what they each committed to, hard decisions when conflicts arise will already have been answered and players can confidently move forward challenging themselves knowing that they are in the right environment with the correct amount of support and opportunities.
Individual vertical integration (IVI) relies on honesty and transparency, and occasionally being very direct. The following must occur to optimize the potential of IVI:
1) The club needs to define the options for the player. It must include the cost, time commitment, and the expectations of the player, coach/club and parents.
2) The player needs to have ongoing discussions with their parents regarding their ambitions. The players ambition level after the age of 13 should be the driving force towards making sacrifices to reach goals set by the player, coach, team and the players family.
3) The parents need to be clear as to what sacrifices the family is willing to make and what sacrifices the player must be wiling to make prior to accepting a place in the club/team.
Player evaluation and placement are vital to one's enjoyment and development.
6-11 Year Old’s - Color Evaluation
Yellow
Very committed
Soccer is a top priority for player and family
Highly ambitious (often does extra)
Recognized talent
Self-motivated to improve
Positive attitude
Good teammate and receptive to coaching
Red
Committed (strong family support)
Ambitious
Talented late developer
Self-motivated to improve
Positive attitude
Good teammate
Blue
Less committed
Ambition may be unclear
Late developer
Likes playing with friends
Enjoys improving
Good teammate
White
Beginner
Not enough time for assessment
12+ Year Old’s - Team Placement
Royalty
High-level play expected (H.S. Varsity, College, Pro)
Soccer is the main focus
Willing to make sacrifices for the team
Support from parents or caretakers is needed
Seen as resilient and talented by coaches
Good teammate and open to coaching
Futures
High-level play expected (H.S. Varsity, College, Pro)
Soccer is a top priority
Willing to make sacrifices for the team
Support from parents or caretakers is helpful
Seen as resilient and possibly a future star
Good teammate and open to coaching
Colors (Lower Level Teams)
Less commitment to soccer
Lower ambition (just wants to play H.S. soccer)
Enjoys playing with friends
Likes to improve
Good teammate
Positive attitude
May need encouragement from parents and coaches to recognize their potential
ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS (AFFORDANCES)
Ecological Dynamics considers players and sports teams as complex adaptive systems from which, underpinned by information from the environment, rich patterns of behavior emerge from continuous interactions of the multiple system components.
Complex System Theory demands that we examine system behavior holistically because the behavior of the whole is much richer than the sum of the individual parts. This is the exact opposite of the reductionist or isolationist approach which breaks systems down into their smallest parts of training expecting to magically improve the performance of the whole when put back together again. This, somewhat antiquated approach, does not respect the holistic paradigm of fractality.
Affordances complement or clarify the Constraints-Based Approach (CBA) as the modern evolving coaching methodology. To the nature of a CBA, affordances exist – they are properties of the environment that are ‘real’, emerging and decaying naturally. By definition, an affordance is the key origin of ecological psychology. Affordances are fundamental relational properties of the environment – they imply the complementarity between the animal and its environment. Affordances exist in the environment. The properties and boundaries that govern the affordance are always present, yet when a human acts upon that landscape their disposition to that affordance defines whether it can be acted upon. Using the term ‘-able’ to characterize the properties of affordances, namely their ability to be, for example ‘catch-able’, ‘climb-able’, or ‘throw-able’. Through this language, it encapsulates the mutual dependency of the perceiver and their relationship with the perceptual field. They are in fact, relational.
An often missed yet key property of an affordance is its dispositional nature. A useful example: picture a wall with three doors, two of which are closed and one of which open. The most obvious answer to get to the other side of the wall would be to go through the open door as it affords the ability to enter it. Yet if we remember that actability of an affordance is mutually relational to the perceiver, their own boundary conditions affect the use of said affordance. The size of the perceiver may not allow passing through the door to be an opportunity to engage with said affordance, making the affordance unattractive to the performer’s needs.
Affordances, thus, are governed by control parameters informed by the constraints imposed by the environment, and their relational position towards the skills available in that given task. Whilst a ball is throw-able, it is governed by the laws of gravity to inform another perceiver that this ball is also fall-able and may not be catch-able due to the size of the perceiver. They are dispositional relative to the organism and its task. This behavioral discrimination echoes to the fact that affordances exist, and that they are directed by lawful properties to which actions occur, yet remain goal directed.
What does an affordance-based pedagogy look like?
‘Affordance Driven’ refers to the design of practices that involves the manipulation of task constraints for the purpose of soliciting affordances for players to act upon. All behavior is deterministic, and goal directed, so affordances must be relational to solving the task at hand. If I want my players to move the ball forward as often as possible, then a number of opportunities for the ball being played forward must be provided. What is key though, is that the desired affordance is not made to be the only available opportunity – the forward pass must not be made the only available choice for the players. The decision must come from the player, not from the constraint.
Our interaction with affordances comes through the perception of information that exists in the form of affordances. In order to perceived an affordance, one must that to perceive occurred through ‘discrimination’ of behavioral response, the pickup of information is to limit behavioral opportunities to certain desirable performance solutions.
In order to achieve perceptual expertise, one must become attuned to ‘invariants’ and ‘disturbances’ that specify the -ableness of the affordance. This -ableness evidences an appearance of the affordance, be it visible/audible/tangible/interactable or actable upon. Affordances are ultimately task specifying, and relative to the organism. The definition of said affordances bares no importance, rather the ability to act upon it provides its worth.
A combination of CBA and the affordance-driven approach looks much like conditioned games, but the key difference lies within the origins of its design. An example of this being a 7v7 working on defending against long balls. A task constraint of ‘every time the attacking team score by a high pass coming from the middle third of the pitch they score 2 points, rather than 1′. The attacking team will then search for a greater number of attacks that lift the ball into the opposition’s final third, creating lots of repetition for the defensive team to defend against long balls. This example of ‘constraining to afford’ creates a repetition of variable long passes to defend against.
Three-phases of Learning & improving decision making
based on the manipulation of task constraints (Affordances), transitional feedback and guidance by coaches and mentors
Search and Exploration
Searching an is characterized as systematic patterns between/within trials over time that emerge from the interaction between individual and environment in pursuit (exploration) of the task goal. That is, patterns emerge from the search for solutions within the perceptual-motor workspace. Searching is the process of learning to attend to informational variables of the task and modifying actions in terms of these informational variables resulting in changes of the perceptual-motor workspace. It should be noted that search occurs whether the individuals are practicing on their own (the practice is discovery-based) or “guided” or constrained by a coach.
Discovery and Attunement
Attunement refers to the process of attending to more useful information for the situation at hand while changes in action refer to changes in movement parameters to achieve the required response. In observing the emergence of these many systematic patterns in practice, we can understand several features. For instance, how individuals find or fail to find solutions; what are the informational variables that allow within-trial, trial-to-trial, and longer scales of change to occur; and how such systematic changes affect the perceptual-motor workspace.
On this process, we can understand what the aspects of the interaction between individual and task requirements are that lead to divergence during practice and learning. Nevertheless, we hold to the idea that individuals search in terms of attended information and action possibilities. Information is detected through interaction with the task and environment and action possibilities can be characterized. In capturing the commonalities in the individual emergent patterns of search, we seek to understand the general principles of learning.
Calibration
Changing the parameters of your information-movement control law in response to initial and external changes.
