How it Started, How it’s Going
The first few weeks of U17 pre-season using a Constraints Led Approach(CLA)
As a practitioner who uses a Constraints Led Approach(CLA), I view skill through an Ecological Dynamics lens. In short, what that means is that skill is the adaptation of the athlete to(and with) the task and environment. Skill is an interaction, and in order to be skilful, development should be viewed as problems to solve, not just solutions to rehearse.
This also means that for problems to be relevant, they must be representative. For effective solutions, we must have the right kinds of problems for the players in front of us. In soccer(football), the problems are never devoid of context: space, dimension, teammates, opponents, areas to invade and areas to evade. So, I rarely(read- not never) incorporate unopposed activities into sessions, even when we practice daily. Unopposed activities generally are decontextualized, ie not representative of the problems players face, so the movements or solutions players use in those kinds of activities are less likely to effectively transfer, nor be stable in context.
It also doesn’t mean “just let them play.” In every session activity, there is purposeful intentionality for challenging players with the right problems, with the right constraints, in order to transfer into the game.
At the most basic level: ball mastery. Ball mastery typically means a relationship with the ball, manipulating it in various ways to have comfort and familiarity with it. But for an invasion sport, what is the context? In order to manipulate the ball, first you have to get the ball. And once you get it, you have to keep it, then you have to advance it, then you have to score. Which means opposition. You can’t get the ball out of thin air- you have to win it first! So in our ‘technical’ activities, there is always an opponent.
And there are endless ways to create an environment where players can win it, keep it, and advance it. Some are more restrictive than others, some add higher horizontal complexity, but in each iteration, the principles remain the same: can we win it, keep it, advance it, and score?
And as we increase the vertical complexity from 1v1 to 2v2 to 3v3, we continually look for ways to embrace the chaos of the game so that we can bring order. With our teammates, can we destabilize the opponent? Can we hunt for the ball(and with the ball!) to exploit areas of weakness?
Can we combine with our teammates to break lines and score?
Can we do it on big goals while concurrent 1v1s and 2v2s are happening around us?
And as we vary each layer and each problem, are we seeing these habits transfer? What happens when we move up from 3v3s to 7v7s all the way up to the 11v11? What do we see?
In our most recent scrimmage(looking at PINK):
Was there movement out of possession to win it quickly?
Was there intentionality to keep it, individually and with teammates close by?
Were there changes of pace in possession, with unique combinations in order to advance the ball?
It’s not always precise. We had some moments of misunderstanding, a bit of ‘Night at the Roxbury’ style “You? Me? You? Me?”, but the overall flow? The continual adaptation to the current circumstances, the transfer of what we do in practice to what we see in the game, is already evident. How the players interact with each other, look to get the ball, keep the ball, and advance the ball- is already more fluid than the first day of practice.
We’re only a few weeks in. The habits aren’t finished products; they’re tendencies still taking shape. But the direction of travel is clear. When practice consistently presents players with the kinds of problems the game actually demands, and provides space for players to adapt together, the game begins to change. And the lens of emergence- not prescribing or rehearsing specific actions, but focusing on the problems players face in the game, and shared principles for how we might interact together, in every phase of the game in each part of the field- helps influence how, as coaches, we view skill to better craft environments to shape behavior and development in ways that will continue to evolve.
Nick, I love that phase where things look messy on the surface and something more intuitive is quietly taking shape underneath. It mirrors not just what I experience with teams, but also in all kinds of relationships with athlete humans. Always nice to meet a kindred spirit on this path.