Sport Practitioners as Sport Ecology Designers: How Ecological Dynamics Has Progressively Changed Perceptions of Skill “Acquisition” in the Sporting Habitat

Theory to Practice: Performance Preparation Models in Contemporary High-Level Sport Guided by an Ecological Dynamics Framework

“…The next design feature was the re-positioning of the coaches' role in performance preparation. As discussed by Woods et al [10], when conceptualised through an ecological dynamics framework, the role of a coach evolves from a provider of verbal corrective instruction, to a learning environment designer, who facilitates athleteenvironment interactions. In this role, re-conceptualisation, the coach is responsible for identifying and manipulating key constraints of the practice environment in an attempt to guide the attention of performers to regulatory information sources available in the surrounding landscape [3,12].…”

“…The last feature of Heads Up Footy is the appreciation of a learner-centred environment, allowing individual needs to be prioritised within practice designs [9]. As discussed throughout this article, such an appreciation has implications for the coach's role in performance preparation, who works with the athlete to co-design landscapes representative of competition [10]. This codesign process places each athlete's needs at the core of the development and performance preparation process.…”

“…Over the years, applied scientists working in the theoretical framework of ecological dynamics, have reconceptualised the role of practitioners in athlete development and performance preparation [8][9][10]. This reconceptualisation advocates the notion of practitioners as designers: professionals who harness the continuous, nonlinear and deeply integrated interactions emerging between the performer, task and environmental subsystems [11,12].…”

“…transiting from junior to senior competition, sustaining high-performance participation and prolonged success). Currently, targeted research is guiding the work of professionals in the practical integration of relevant propositions within specific sporting environments (for some notable examples, see [10,13,[22][23][24][25][26]). Continued examples of implementing an ecological dynamics framework by sporting practitioners could support those who seek to avoid reverting to more traditional models of performance preparation grounded in 'operational standards' or 'technical performance templates' prescribed in coaching manuals.…”

Using Optical Tracking System Data to Measure Team Synergic Behavior: Synchronization of Player-Ball-Goal Angles in a Football Match

“…The study of sports teams, from an ecological dynamics theoretical framework, is based on the understanding of how players collectively and in coordination behave in a football match, detecting patterns of information (e.g., movements from the opponent team) in the specific performance environment [ 5 ]. There is evidence that the main intra-team communication channel is the perception of shared affordances, understood as opportunities for action offered by the performance environment and perceived by trained groups of players, that evolve over time [ 6 , 7 ].…”