Understanding key constraints and practice design in Rugby Union place kicking: Experiential knowledge of professional kickers and experienced coaches

Abstract

Place kicks present valuable opportunities to score points in Rugby Union, which are typically performed under varying constraints in competitive performance environments. Previous quantitative studies suggest these interacting constraints can influence fluctuations in place kick success. To further the understanding of how fluctuations in place kicking success emerge, our aim was twofold: i) to explore and identify the key constraints that professional place kickers and experienced place kicking coaches perceive to influence the difficulty of a place kick and ii) to understand the level to which current place kicking practice environments represent these key constraints experienced in performance environments. Six professional place kickers and six experienced place kicking coaches were interviewed. Using a deductive thematic analysis, 11 key constraints were identified: individual constraints of expectation for success and fatigue, task constraints of angle and distance to goalposts, environmental constraints of wind, weather, pitch, and crowd, and situational constraints of previous kicking performance, time remaining and current score margin. Place kicking is typically practised individually or with a small number of place kickers in isolation from team sessions. Where possible, coaches should be encouraged to include place kicking in simulated game scenarios during practice to represent key constraints from performance environments. Our study demonstrates how experiential knowledge can enrich the understanding of sport performance and inform the design of practice environments which simulate relevant constraints of competitive performance to enhance skill adaptation of athletes.

Exploring Coach Perceptions of Parkour-Style Training for Athlete Learning and Development in Team Sports

“…Researchers with an interest in motor learning and development as well as skill acquisition have increasingly sought to make use of knowledge sourced from empirical research, as well as from the experiences of high-performance practitioners (termed experiential knowledge) to understand how to create the best learning and talent development environments in sport (e.g., see Burnie et al, 2018;Pocock et al, 2020;McCosker et al, 2020;Stone et al, 2020;Woods et al, 2020a;Woods et al, 2020b). This re-balancing of the relationship between experiential and empirical knowledge has emerged because the rationale for evidence-based practice in motor learning and skill acquisition has been skewed towards a limited categorisation of knowledge viewed as influencing practice (Rothwell et al, 2020).…”

“…To develop a more nuanced understanding of effective learning designs in athlete development programs, recent research informed by ecological dynamics theory has transitioned towards a deeper integration of experiential and empirical knowledge (Pocock et al, 2020;Stone et al, 2020). Such integration is utilised to create a new and integrated understanding predicated on psychological science, knowledge, and practice experiences (see also; McKay & O'Connor, 2018;Browne et al, 2019).…”

Effects of manipulating specific individual constraints on performance outcomes, emotions, and movement phase durations in Rugby Union place kicking

“…score margin, time remaining and previous performance of the kicker) vary (Nel, 2013;Pocock, Bezodis, Davids, & North, 2018;Quarrie & Hopkins, 2015). Furthermore, experiential knowledge of professional place kickers and experienced coaches has highlighted key individual constraints on place kicking performance, such as feelings of expectation for success and acute fatigue (Pocock, Bezodis, Davids, Wadey, & North, 2020). Understanding the experiential knowledge of practitioners and athletes, as well as insights from performance analysis, can help to identify key performance constraints which should be simulated in representative practice design s (Rothwell et al, 2020).…”

“…The present study combines the findings of performance analyses of place kicking (e.g. Pocock et al, 2018;Quarrie & Hopkins, 2015) and experiential knowledge of professional place kickers and experienced coaches (Pocock et al, 2020) to inform a novel experimental design of individual constraints in place kicking. Manipulating specific individual constraints, such as expectation for success and acute fatigue, in a representative learning environment can also develop an understanding of their effects on emotions of place kickers during performance.…”

“…The categorisation of the three kicking locations were made relative to the distance and angle from the goalposts (Figure 1). These locations of varying task difficulty were based on evidence from the experiential knowledge of professional place kickers and experienced coaches (Pocock et al, 2020), and based on data from performance analysis of place kicking in the 2015 Rugby World Cup (Pocock et al, 2018). The first kicking location was situated directly in front of the goalposts (0° to goalposts) on the 22 m line, categorised as an " easy" location.…”