Beyond the Tip of the Iceberg: Using Systems Archetypes to Understand Common and Recurring Issues in Sports Coaching

Abstract

Background: Systems thinking, a fundamental approach for understanding complexity, is beginning to gain traction in sports science. Systems archetypes (SAs) describe common recurring patterns of system behaviors and have been used extensively in other domains to explain the system wide influences on behavior. SAs look at the deeper levels of systemic structure by identifying what creates system behaviors, which supports the development of interventions to identify and resolve problem sources. Methods: Four commonly used SAs were used to explain the dynamics underpinning recurring issues for coaching in football: (1) Fixes that fail, (2) Shifting the burden, (3) Drifting goals, and (4) Success to the successful. The SAs models were built, refined and validated by seven subject matter experts (SMEs) including experienced football researchers, systems thinking experts, an international football coach, a skill acquisition specialist, and an experienced exercise scientist. Results: The findings show that the SAs fit well in the football coaching context, providing further evidence that a complex system thinking approach is required when considering football performance and its optimization. The developed SAs identify the factors that play a role in recurring issues in football coaching and highlight the systemic structures that contribute to the issues. The developed SAs identify the appropriate leverage points in the system where sustainable change can be made to improve coaching practice and subsequent performance of players. Discussion: A common theme emerging across the analyses was that systemic problems often arise in football when quick fixes are attempted. Whereas, improvements to system behavior usually require a delay after the implementation of the appropriate corrective action. The SAs developed in the current study also provide practical templates of common problems in football that can be used to prompt discussions around how to avoid ineffective interventions and instead make sustainable improvements across multiple aspects of football performance.

A Systems Analysis Critique of Sport-Science Research

“…These include the value placed on quantifiable data, 51 reductionism, and linear thinking. 9 A positive for sport science research is that we are witnessing a greater proportion of research applying qualitative or mixed methods, studies applying systems thinking and complexity science, and the emergence of numerous multidisciplinary journals. The CLD suggests that further such shifts in theoretical and methodological approaches are critical requirements for future sports science research.…”

“…3 Similar to MBI, the ACWR has been criticized as a statistically flawed method, despite its use in numerous peer-reviewed publications. 1,8 These highprofile cases, along with other longstanding issues in sport science, including reductionism versus holism, 9,10 monodisciplinary research, 11 research-practice gaps, 12,13 and a lack of accepted concepts, 14 highlight that multiple issues are negatively impacting the discipline.…”

“…29,30 CLDs are composed of variables connected by arrows, which depict the causal influences between the variables (Figure 1). 28 Systems thinking methods are gaining traction in sports research, including performance analysis, injury, coaching, and sport science generally, 9,16,[31][32][33][34] and such approaches may be suited to understanding the pertinent issues associated with sport science research. In this article, we argue that CLD provides a useful method to help understand the complex set of interacting variables, which influence the quality and impact of sport science research.…”

With Crisis Comes Opportunity: Redesigning Performance Departments of Elite Sports Clubs for Life After a Global Pandemic

“…may have the potential to shift the focus from football performance to its component parts. This form of reductionism is increasingly being recognized as an inappropriate approach for performance analysis and improvement in sport ( Glazier, 2010 ; McLean et al, 2019b ; Salmon and McLean, 2019 ).…”

The Communication and Passing Contributions of Playing Positions in a Professional Soccer Team

“…Within the past decade, the acknowledgement of soccer as a dynamic and complex system has brought about a rapid progression of new methods aimed at improving match performance analysis ( Low et al, 2019 ; McLean et al, 2019a ; Sarmento et al, 2017 ). As such, there has been a shift away from analysis of isolated components of soccer performance to a focus on group behaviours that explores the collective movements and cooperative actions of team members and opposition players ( Low et al, 2019 ; Sarmento et al, 2017 ).…”