Ecological dynamics approach in the youth soccer: A short narrative review

Abstract

Introduction: The creative actions are a production of the individual who must meet the constraints of the task and the environment. Consequently, creative motor actions are understood as functional movement patterns that are new to the individual and/or group and adapted to meet the constraints of the motor problem. The literature argues that creative motor actions can be promoted by didactic interventions that favour exploration by manipulating constraints. Methodology: For the bibliographic search PubMed and Sport Discuss databases were used selecting articles published between 01/01/2014 and 10/09/2020. Results: The initial database search produced 12 results. After removing the duplicates (2) and studies on specific or tactical soccer skills (3), seven studies were selected, analysed and included in the narrative review. Discussion and conclusions: The spatial and task constraints affect the distances between the young players but not the passage ball angles nor the ball speed. Furthermore, one study in particular showed very high levels of vigorous and very vigorous physical activity in all the tasks designed with ecological dynamic teaching. This study show that the use of these new teaching methodologies has an impact on levels of physical activity in accordance with the recommended health parameters.

From Traditional Approach to Ecological Dynamics Approach with the Italian Young Soccer Players

“…More specifically, if we consider a performance environment as a rich landscape of offerings (Hulteen et al, 2018), some of them are designed by the coach and presented through a continuous variation of teaching styles, then such practice tasks are directing or guiding the search of the performers (Woods et al, 2020a;Colella, 2019;Sannicandro, 2020).…”

“…In fact, decision making is considered a determining factor in sports open skills (Sannicandro, 2020;Diaz del Campo et al, 2011) and identifies the expert athlete compared to the novice (Diaz del Campo et al, 2011;Silva et al, 2014;Práxedes et al, 2018).…”

“…The literature has suggested that perception and action in many different sports game situations have a positive influence on improving tactical performance (Baker et al, 2003;Berry et al, 2008;Côté et al, 2003;Sannicandro, 2020;Serra-Olivares et al, 2015).…”

Criticisms and perspectives of heuristic learning in physical education

“…In the presence of a cognitive approach the teacher will play his role with a function of instructor predetermining with different degrees of prescription the activities to be performed and the goals to be achieved. In the case of ecological-dynamic approach, the teacher assumes the role of observer and supporting the students in their activities of exploration and discovery [28]. Executive variability is not seen as a limiting factor, but as an index of the non-linear interaction of the system with the constraints imposed by the organism, the task and the environment in the process of finding new motor solutions [29].…”

The Effectiveness of Constraints-Led Training on Skill Development in Football

“…Among the disciplines in which there have been attempts to apply the CLA, football is also included [25]. The main problem is that young players very often participate in untrained competitions that create unfair habits, greatly compromising future performances.…”