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The Constraints-Led Approach: Principles for Sports Coaching and Practice Design

Ian Renshaw,

Keith Davids,

Daniel Newcombe,

Will Roberts (Goodreads Author)

really liked it 4.00 · Rating details · 1 rating · 1 review

For the last 25 years, a constraints-based framework has helped to inform the way that many sport scientists seek to understand performance, learning design and the development of expertise and talent in sport. The Constraints-Led Approach: Principles for Sports Coaching and Practice Design provides students and practitioners with the theoretical knowledge required to impl ...more

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Paperback, 186 pages

Published February 20th 2019 by Routledge

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Jul 22, 2020 Eduardo rated it really liked it

Shelves: sports-coaches

I wrote a more detailed post about this book here:
The Game May Teach the Game
This review is excerpted from that post.

If you have heard coaches talk about motor learning then you have almost certainly heard coaches utter the phrase, "the game teaches the game". This adage is usually meant to point out that the best learning occurs when learners are immersed in the most game-like environments possible as opposed to repetition-heavy drills. But the phrase has also been used as an excuse for coache I wrote a more detailed post about this book here:
The Game May Teach the Game
This review is excerpted from that post.

If you have heard coaches talk about motor learning then you have almost certainly heard coaches utter the phrase, "the game teaches the game". This adage is usually meant to point out that the best learning occurs when learners are immersed in the most game-like environments possible as opposed to repetition-heavy drills. But the phrase has also been used as an excuse for coaches to be too passive in their practice design and execution. The authors use their book to show coaches how to walk the tightrope between doing too much coaching and too little and why that balance matters.

This book is written by four authors who are considered to be leaders in the relatively young field of ecological dynamics. The constraints-led approach (CLA) is a methodology that is built on the principles of ecological dynamics and non-linear pedagogy. And this is just the beginning of the list of technical terms to be learned in this field. The authors are well aware that there is a sizable divide between researchers and practitioners (coaches) and that divide is filled with jargon that the researchers are familiar with but that coaches are not. A main goal of the book is to bridge that divide by describing the existing research as clearly as possible. Another goal is to give coaches practical tools and processes to facilitate the application of CLA in practice design. It is a testament to the difficulty of these tasks that the book is still jargon-laden but it is also testament to the authors' skill that the book is still very readable. Part one contains the heaviest mental lifting, as it lays the foundation for parts two and three. Having read many scholarly articles, some of them in this field, I can say that the authors have done well in making their principles accessible but I still had to work for it. The ensuing parts read much faster and made much more sense as a result of the efforts put into part one (by both readers and authors).

While I believe that this is an important book and have learned a great deal from it, I also believe that it is in bad need of a second edition. It is my impression that the editing of the text was either hastily or poorly done. I noticed numerous instances where good ideas were clouded and where language usage was inconsistent. Given the importance of terminology and ideas to this book, it seems unfair to me that the authors should be subject to and judged by poor editing. I look forward to an updated edition of this book that may benefit from better editing. ...more

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