Category: Training Design Notes
Training Design Notes 4
Three Considerations of the Challenge Point Framework applied to coaching practice.
First consideration, we must recognize that although difficulties or challenges in practice can be beneficial for learning, such challenges can also have motivational “costs”. These costs are a product of introducing more errors into practice and performance. Reduced motivation has negative effects on learning because learners may stop practising sooner and because reduced motivation might make learning less effective in and of itself.
Second consideration, regarding the challenge point framework and coaching is that not all difficulties are equally beneficial for learning. It is not difficulty in and of itself which is good for learning but the psychological processes which are engendered by the difficulty. These types of process difficulties have been termed “desirable” because they beneficially enhance encoding of information and its retrieval. We suggest that a key factor in determining which difficulties are desirable is practice specificity; that is, do the constraints of practice match those likely to be encountered in competition? For instance, task speed is likely only to be a desirable difficulty if response time is constrained in competition. A number of conditions of practice have been shown to impact on learning and transfer based on the match between the two scenarios, such as training under conditions of anxiety, matching of visual conditions during practice and testing, and maintaining of perception-action links integral to the task.
Third consideration, the dynamic nature of the competitive environment makes the “optimal” difficulty for an individual (or team) a moving target across practice sessions or across seasons. The difficulty of a particular practice scenario can change in the short term, perhaps due to fatigue or arousal, as well as over the long term as a result of learning. Moreover, goals of practice may change, such that at times it may be beneficial to practice with high functional difficulty to optimize learning and improvement; at other times it may be beneficial to practise with lower relative difficulty, reinforcing successes and promoting competence.
In short, coaches can manipulate functional difficulty, motivation, and specificity to optimize different practice goals.
Read more:
Training Design Notes 3
The Performance-Learning Paradox
Increased difficulty during practice might be detrimental for performance in the short term, but is ultimately beneficial for learning in the long term.
A training session with a low challenge (highly structured and blocked) will lead to high levels of performance in practice and low levels of learning (retention and transfer), whereas a session that is high in task difficulty and highly representative (e.g., match practice and high challenge) will have lower levels of performance in practice and higher levels of skill learning. These relationships are dependent on the skill level of the player, and the optimal challenge is when the potential for skill retention and transfer is high and decrements in practice performance are kept to the minimum. For a progressive contact skill training plan, it is recommended to start the plan with a low challenge (high levels of performance in practice) and build toward a high challenge point.
Read more:
Training Design Notes 2
Representative learning design refers to the arrangement of conditions and constraints of a training or testing environment so that the conditions or constraints represent the performance environment to which the results are intended to apply.
Representative learning design does not imply that coaches and practitioners have to design practice tasks that incorporate all features of competition all the time. It is a fundamental misconception that successful application of constraints involves learning under full competitive performance conditions all the time. An important challenge for coaches and 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.
Rugby Science 