Movement Variability in Soccer Training E-Book

Diogo Coutinho

• Herausgeber: Meyer & Meyer Sport
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 198

Beschreibung

Movement Variability in Soccer Training is the new approach to enhancing practice and developing players' movement adaptabilities and creative play on the field. Movement Variability in Soccer Training bridges the gap between theory and practice. In the first section of the book, you are given the background theory and scientific evidence supporting movement variability. This section covers the short- and mid-term effects of adopting movement variability training as it relates to players' technical, tactical, and creative development. In the following section, you are given 100 training drills—practical examples for implementing variability during training based on that session's goals, such as individual, group, or team development. Finally, with this book, you learn how to incorporate periodization training during each training microcycle. By addressing all aspects of performance, this book is an essential reference for every soccer trainer, coach, or player!

Leseprobe

DIOGO COUTINHO • SARA SANTOS • JAIME SAMPAIO

MOVEMENT

VARIABILITY

in Soccer Training

Enrich Your Training Sessions to Enhance and Develop Player Creativity

Meyer & Meyer Sport

British Library of Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Movement Variability in Soccer Training

Maidenhead: Meyer & Meyer Sport (UK) Ltd., 2024

9781782555353

All rights reserved, especially the right to copy and distribute, including the translation rights. No part of this work may be reproduced–including by photocopy, microfilm or any other means–processed, stored electronically, copied or distributed in any form whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher.

© 2024 by Meyer & Meyer Sport (UK) Ltd.

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Member of the World Sport Publishers’ Association (WSPA), www.w-s-p-a.org

9781782555353

Email: [email protected]

www.thesportspublisher.com

Contents

Foreword by Peter Sturgess

Preface by Isaac Guerrero

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART IDEVELOPING ENRICHED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Chapter 1The Nature of Soccer

Perception and Action

Constraints Shape Players’ Decisions

Different Scales of Analysis

Chapter 2The Rise of Creativity

Looking for P-type Creativity During the Early Years

Creating Enriching and Supportive Environments

Frameworks and Programs for the Development of Creativity

Chapter 3The Role of Variability in Performance and Learning

Differential Learning

Evidence-Based Interventions

Short-Term Effects of Variability

Mid- and Long-Term Effects of Variability

PART IIDESIGNING TRAINING TASKS

Chapter 4Adding Variability

Nano-Level Tasks

The Creator

The Race

Like M. Jordan

Hitman

Be the Fastest

Move Like an Animal

The Equilibrist

The Astronaut

The Sprinter

The Sniper

Manyballs

Mountain Climber

The Thief

Minesweeper

Hot Wheels

The Battle

40 Passes

The Great Wall

The Sculptor

Golf

The Way to Goal

The Labyrinth

Fill the Basket (Go Shopping)

The Snooker

Find a Home

Sevbonaut

Me First!

Tic-Tac-Toe

The Coach

Micro-Level Tasks (Individual Level

Game of Thrones

Big Head

Monoball

Daredevil

AMGAP (As Many Goals As Possible)

The Contortionist

The Marriage

The Challenge

Ruined House

Wrestling

Hockey Game

Be Like Xavi (Hernandez)

The Bounce

Jigsaw

Catch the Man

The Handkerchief

Picasso

Multisport Game

Meso-Level Tasks (Group Level)

Two Balls Game

Three Balls Game

Twins

Storytelling

In and Out

Abracadabra

Hands and Feet

Playground

The Signalman

The Sheriff

Downhill

Seven Balls Game

The Neighbor

Castle Robbery

Priming

The Superhero

Floating Pitch

The Substitute

Fourball

Mini Rugby

Chameleon

Doublockey

The List

Two Faces

El Rondo

Guess Where

Wonderland

The Clock

Macro-Level Tasks (Collective Level)

Treasure Hunt

Open the Gates

Good vs. Bad Neighbors

Social Distance

Chasin’ You

The Shuttle

Roulette

Hot Ball

Chasing Rules

The Three Kingdoms

Chasing Players

Pay Attention!

The Shooter

Under Construction

Up and Down

Chapter 5Periodization of Variability

Concluding Remarks

Bibliography

About the Authors

Foreword

Releasing the potential in all of our children must be the goal for every parent, coach, or volunteer. In addition, we must strive to develop, within each child, a lifelong love of playing sport and being physically active. Feeling confident about your ability to participate is the first important step, so the development of a robust, varied, and skilled movement capability is vital.

Each page of this book will help coaches understand how to plan, implement, and reflect upon their development programs in order to maximize returns in the domains of movement variability, the fostering of creativity, and, most importantly, the promotion of new learning. The sheer randomness of the game of soccer requires high levels of adaptability both in perception action as well as in the player’s physical responses.

The millions of fans who watch the game are also desperate to be entertained. Creative players will solve those situations in the game with novel and unexpected responses. This capability can be enhanced, and the book outlines a methodology for the creation of enriched environments that nurture the player’s divergent thinking and motor skills.

This book has influenced my work in such a positive way, and I would recommend it to anyone who is involved in education, sports coaching, and the development of young people. It skillfully presents a combination of relevant research supplemented by lots of practical examples to help deepen the understanding of such an important area.

–Peter SturgessThe Football Association

Preface

Sharing knowledge is always an act of generosity, and this book is a good example of that. As a neighbor of this community of “facilitators” who cohabit this wonderful world that is training football, I thank Sara, Diogo, and Jaime for their invaluable contribution through this work, and for all the (many) research that have inspired us day by day to help these players with whom we are lucky to share, as Professor Paco Seirul-lo would say, this (in)formative journey.

Based on the need to practice with our athletes under the paradigm of complexity, the practice in variability that the authors propose in this work allows us to manage this necessary continuous modification of contexts in order to facilitate the adaptation of our players to them, thus causing the emergence of flexible behaviors away from modelling, stereotyped responses, and rigid motor solutions, really suboptimal in a sport with a high level of uncertainty such as the one we are dealing with.

The recommendation of the use of exploratory tasks, which the authors share with us, constitutes an efficient invitation to adaptability from the practice in variability, which will therefore allow the cultivation of individual and collective creativity, key to the optimization of the “playing” of our athletes, thus emerging new attractors or making others that have already emerged previously more flexible. Jaime, Sara, and Diogo, with their proposal, propose to avoid the excessive stabilization of some attractors that, without this variable practice, would limit the possibilities of exploration of our players in relation to possible new actions and emerging interactions during the game.

Reading these pages, the need to flee from pre-established models will grow within us, bringing us closer to adopting a role, as technical trainers, more based on facilitation than on direction, on the enhancement of implicit learning, within a context of variety, which favors the emancipation of the player within the game. The reflections shared by the three authors in this text can help us to change the intervention of the player for the exchange, turning our contribution to the athlete into something more efficient than sensationalist.

We are talking about a sincere approach to the natural expression of the athlete in favor of that longed-for autonomy of the player. In the same way that in a rondo we can consider as a strategy to “condition” the game to a contact with the object that different motor actions emerge, perhaps creative, understanding this conditioning or constraint as a disturbance that seeks to destabilize the player but in no case tries to improve “the game to a contact,” the authors of this work invite us to reflect on the important role that variability has in the adoption of (in)finite registers to be adopted by the athletes in the framework of the optimization of their decisionmaking system. Jorge Wagensberg from Barcelona used to say, “the lung needs air, the heart needs blood and the mouth needs saliva, [but] the brain needs change,” and this is exactly what the authors offer their athletes through variable practices such as those expressed in these lines that we can read below, applying Mayer’s principle of turning “the game itself into its master.” This variability will lead the player to optimize his creativity, a concept that the authors avoid, rightly in my opinion, attributing to the innate capacity of the athlete, understanding that this creativity can be “trained” as long as a context is offered that allows for “divergent discovery.” In this practice space, the player will find his own challenges from, for example, constraints proposed by the coach, and will end up driving the ball, passing it or shooting it at goal with the intention of being efficient, without being subjected to inductive exchanges by the coach.

On more than one occasion, I have heard one of the authors of the book, Jaime Sampaio, say that, “the way we configure the environment is the way in which we will later ask our players for answers,” and this work that we have in our hands today will help us to generate that context which does not intend to induce specific movement behaviors in the athletes, but rather contribute to their recalling old and developing new movement patterns according to specific coordination and tactical requirements that the players will consider appropriate for a unique and unrepeatable moment. These movement patterns will be grounded according to their capabilities, potential, naturalized behaviors, emotions... their resources. As Juanma Lillo says, “in a match we see what we know, not what is happening.”

We could understand this text as a manual for disturbing the athlete, as long as we have internalized beforehand that practice in variability does not expose the team to the “danger” of “training mistakes” but rather is about inviting the players to a series of adaptations according to an intentionally designed environment. In the endless and wonderful exchanges I have daily with my colleagues in the Methodology Department at FC Barcelona, in which the authors of this book have participated directly or indirectly on more than one occasion, a reflection has frequently appeared that connects with the feeling that underlies this text: From the linear perspective, to train an error is to do something that does not reproduce the “real conditions of the game,” but this vision of practice will invite the perpetuation of the previously mentioned pre-established models, when “training errors” under our paradigm would be not respecting the external focus, the player’s flow, especially in the initial training of the football player, it will be necessary to understand this game of football beyond the normative, seeking to offer these young athletes a space of continuous exploration based on generic concepts of the game such as space/time, teammates/opponents, directionality, trajectories...

If we change the perspective from modelling to disturbing, we will see that it is an opportunity for the player to self-organize in search of a main intention (specific to each game idea), avoiding that common underestimation existing in many training proposals towards the adaptive capacity of the human being athlete.

–Isaac GuerreroDeputy Director of the Methodology Department at FC Barcelona

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their sincere thanks to all involved people in this book. From the players who engaged in the sessions to the people that capture their performances through video and photograph as well as to those who directly or indirectly participated in bringing it to life. It was a privilege to work with such talented and amazing people.

Introduction

This book provides a practical perspective on how additional variability can complement soccer training drills. To fulfill this purpose, the first section of the book offers a brief general theoretical background supporting the benefits of adding movement variability, and the second section contains 90 training tasks that are divided into four task types: (1) nano-level tasks, which are tasks without opposition, focus on challenging the players to explore and create new movement patterns; (2) micro-level (individual-based) tasks consist of game-based situations that face low opposition levels (e.g., 1vs1, 1vs1+4 neutral players); (3) meso-level tasks (group-based) focus on developing cooperative and competitive tendencies between teams with low tactical complexity; and (4) macro-level tasks (collective-based) are embodied in a high tactical complexity and emphasize more positioning-based solutions. These tasks were created with additional variability, and progressions have been added to assist all readers in using, adapting, and creating their own training sessions.

Part I: Developing Enriched Learning Environments

Part I presents the theoretical background in support of movement variability. The information presented in this section acts as a key precursor for acquiring novel behaviors and is fundamental to developing a better understanding of the tasks created in Part II.

Chapter 1: The Nature of Soccer

This chapter characterizes soccer from a functional and structural perspective, emphasizing how the available information about the environment guides players’ movement behaviors. From this viewpoint, it also describes how varying task constraints emphasize different information and, consequently, afford different opportunities for action. Finally, this chapter discusses players’ performance using four scales of analysis (nano, micro, meso, and macro), which support the design and division of the training task categories.

Chapter 2: The Rise of Creativity

This chapter explores the importance of creativity in developing a soccer player’s expert performance. In this regard, this chapter contextualizes the developmental trends of creativity, presents a comprehensive framework intended to nurture creative enriching environments during the early years, and discusses the factors that affect the process of developing creativity. This chapter also emphasizes pedagogical perspectives and guidelines that coaches should incorporate when designing training tasks, mainly based on movement variability, to create an enriching and supportive environment for creativity to thrive.

Chapter 3: The Role of Variability in Performance and Learning

This chapter presents general perspectives on movement variability and moves toward a more practical perspective. In this chapter, readers will acknowledge the benchmarks of adding movement variability and learn how to include variability in the training tasks to ensure a more effective acquisition of new movement skills. Ultimately, the main results regarding the acute and chronic effects of adding variability during training practices in soccer will be presented, ranging from analytical to more game-based tasks.

Part II: Designing Training Tasks

Part II presents 90 training tasks embedded in variability according to four main themes: nano-level tasks, micro-level tasks, meso-level tasks, and macro-level tasks. This categorization enables readers to better follow the main aim of each category and better understand how to integrate variability into the corresponding session aims.

Chapter 4: Adding Variability

The chapter starts with a brief explanation of the concepts and primary principles that compose the nano, micro, meso, and macro scales before presenting and describing 90 training tasks with additional variability.

Chapter 5: Periodization of Variability

This chapter proposes the periodization of variability in regard to the four main categories, exemplifying a way for players to identify opportunities that will enhance their soccer performance. This chapter also takes into consideration soccer players’ individualities and competition demands and therefore highlights the need for developing training designs that require high variability and adaptability.

PART I

Developing Enriched Learning Environments

CHAPTER 1

The Nature of Soccer

Soccer is an invasion team sport in which the team in possession aims to progress down the field toward the goal and create goal scoring opportunities, while the team without possession looks to stay compact and restrict the available space, intending to protect their goal and recover possession of the ball (Grehaigne et al., 1997). Two opposing teams, each composed of eleven players (including the goalkeeper), compete in space and time to gain an advantage over their opponents. In the search for this space, players develop cooperative and competitive interactions with their teammates and opponents (McGarry et al., 2002). For example, the team in possession attempts to use the entire pitch space to attack and increase their distance from the nearest defender, allowing more time to decide how best to perform. The defending team stays compact and attempts to put pressure on the opponent with the ball by decreasing the available space (i.e., prevent player progression in the pitch) and time to restrict the possibility of the player in possession of the ball in exploring the best offensive options (e.g., passing and dribbling). The players from the same team must work together to develop functionally collective behaviors that allow them to pursue a collective goal, while at the same time competing with the opponents in search of spatial and temporal dominance (Grehaigne et al., 1997; Passos et al., 2016).

Performance in soccer results from a continuous process of co-adaptation between the players and teams in the search for functional movement behaviors (Araujo & Davids, 2016; Araújo et al., 2006; Passos et al., 2016). That is, the players belonging to one team will adjust their behavior in relation to their individual characteristics; for example, if the left fullback is a player characterized by lower displacement speed and faces a technically developed (1vs1 skills) winger who possesses high sprinting ability, the team may be positioned closer to the left corridor when defending. Similarly, while attacking, if the defending team retreats close to their target, this may imply that the offensive team explores more of the lateral spaces of the pitch to destabilize the defensive team (co-adaptation in the search for functional behaviors). Based on these assumptions, performance has been conceived and analyzed from the perspective of how players adjust their movement behavior according to the various configurations of play (Folgado et al., 2014) and to changes in the environment (Travassos et al., 2012a). That is, players coordinate their actions in space and time with their teammates according to the available information, such as the distance to target (Vilar et al., 2014), distance to teammates (Gonçalves et al., 2014), and their position in relation to the ball position (Gonçalves et al., 2019). For example, after losing the ball that led to a 3vs2+Gk defensive situation, the defending players may retreat to their own goal in an attempt to gain time that will allow more teammates to recover while also putting pressure on the player in possession in the penalty area to limit possible attempts to score. Under this example, players adjust their positioning according to local numerical relations (3vs2) and space (i.e., they retreat when close to the defensive half and press forward when close to their goal). Therefore, the players’ positioning on the pitch is a reflection of how each individual player explores the environmental information to support their actions (Gonçalves et al., 2016; Seifert et al., 2013; Travassos et al., 2012a). This evidence highlights that different functional behaviors emerge as a consequence of the players’ abilities to interact with the surrounding environment.

Players should be able to interpret the available environment and be independent and confident in being different and adaptive.

Perception and Action

The environment acts as a key role in the players’ decision since it contains informational properties that the players use to aid their decisions (Araújo et al., 2006; Fajen, 2007; Le Runigo et al., 2005; Travassos et al., 2012a). In this regard, player and team performances are based on the performer-environment relationship, in which the players support their actions according to the available information (Gibson, 1986). That is, opportunities to act (i.e., affordances) will emerge as the performers move and interact with the environmental information to support the emergence of goal-directed behaviors (Fajen, 2005; Fajen et al., 2009). For example, when two players are playing on the street, and suddenly, one kicks the ball and it stays trapped in a tree. To retrieve the ball, the players will explore the environment: If the tree is easy to climb, they may be able to retrieve it themselves; otherwise, they may search for other solutions, such as searching for a chair that might help them to increase their height or asking an adult to assist them. In this case, the adult opportunities for action would be different from those of the kids because, since the adult is likely taller, he may be able to retrieve the ball without needing to search for other materials to help increase his size. Under this scope, two different types of affordances can be considered: (1) body-scaled affordances, which refer to individual action capabilities, such as the ability of a defender to jump to cut the ball, and (2) action-scaled affordances, which relate to environmental properties, such as when the movement of a teammate opens space (i.e., the diagonal movement of a forward that attracts the opposing defender to move with him) for the player in possession to explore (Fajen et al., 2009). In general, the players’ ability to act (e.g., power, physical skills, motivation, tactical awareness, and individual constraints) and the environmental information (e.g., movement of teammates and opponents) will guide players’ movement behaviors. For example, when performing a dribble, the player in possession analyzes the defender’s body orientation and the available space to decide how to successfully dribble around the opponent. The player retrieves information, such as the perceived distance to the nearest defender, by reading his body orientation to provoke misalignments (Duarte et al., 2012) and identifies the available space based on the distance from the other defenders to the goal and to the pitch boundaries (Coutinho et al., 2020). However, because of the dynamic nature of soccer, the opportunities for action appear and disappear continuously based on the spatial-temporal interactions that emerge between the teammates and direct opponents (Le Runigo et al., 2005; Passos et al., 2016; Travassos et al., 2012a). Using the previous example, if the player in possession holds the ball for a long time without exploring different changes in speed and direction, it may be possible that the distance to the nearest defender decreases in such a way that would not allow the player to overcome the defender in the available space. As these examples show, players couple their actions, both in space and time, with the information, allowing them to decide when and how to perform (Le Runigo et al., 2005). Therefore, players’ movement behaviors in the pitch will depend upon their ability to exploit, identify, and use the relevant information in the competitive environment (Araújo et al., 2006; Fajen et al., 2009). Taking these findings into consideration, players must be challenged to refine their perceptual-action systems by exposing them to training tasks that help to develop their understanding of which actions are possible according to the environment and each individual’s action capabilities (Fajen, 2007).

“The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.”

–Alexandra Trenfor

Constraints Shape Players’ Decisions

The constraints-led approach consists of a theoretical approach underpinned in dynamical systems, ecological psychology, and non-linear pedagogy that characterize players as open systems, which implies a mutual relationship between the performer and the surrounding environment (Renshaw et al., 2019). As exemplified earlier, players will interact with the environment to solve their problems (e.g., retrieve the ball from the tree). Constraints create boundary conditions that shape and guide the players’ movement behaviors. According to Newell (1986a), the constraints can be classified according to three types: (1) environmental constraints, which concern the physical and social proprieties of the surrounding environment, such as the weather, light conditions, altitude (physical-related factors), and even the support from the group of peers and cultural expectations (social factors); (2) individual constraints, which reflect the performer’s individual characteristics, such as motivation, cognitive skills, and height; and (3) task constraints, which relate to manipulations in the task, such as the pitch size, number of players, game rules, or type of materials included. For example, the way a team presses the opposing team’s goal kick will depend on the match status (e.g., if the team is losing, it is more likely to press [task constraint]), the individual players’ ability to press (e.g., motivation, level of endurance [individual constraints]), or even the type of weather (e.g., during windy conditions, the last line is more likely to stay closer to their goal as a result of the no offside rule during the goal kick [environmental constraints]).