Professor Keith Davids: why coaches must focus on more than the practice ‘task’ in order to develop player skill

Coach | Approach | Peter Glynn | 17.9.21

Coaches must understand the interaction between task, environment and individual player to develop skill effectively, says Keith Davids, Professor of Motor Learning at Sheffield Hallam university. Image: Cathrin Mueller/Getty Images for DFB

Learning: 

-       The danger of only focusing on task design when developing player skill

-       How skill behaviour emerges from a ‘meeting’ of task, environment and individual

-       Understanding the physical and social nature of the practice or game environment

Coaches shouldn’t only focus on ‘task’ constraints when attempting to develop player skill, but instead focus on the ‘interaction’ between task, environment and individual, explains Keith Davids, Professor of motor learning at Sheffield Hallam University.

“I think there are some people who really like the constraints-based approach to coaching, as it's called, and they like the theoretical ideas, but they just get a little bit of a misconception of how it works,” says Davids.

“Some coaches really focus on the task constraints, because as a coach that's what I can control.