The Constraints-Led Approach isn’t about letting players figure it out randomly.

It’s about shaping environments where they can explore, adapt, and develop real skills.

What does this mean for coaches working with beginners 🧵👇 When beginners start out, movement is messy.

And that’s exactly what we want.

They’re not learning a “perfect technique”—they’re learning how to coordinate their body and solve problems through experience.

We call this soft assembly

"Why do players perform well in drills but struggle in games?

Often, the answer is representativeness. Many drills remove key game info, while full matches don’t provide chances for them to explore the skill

So how do we fix this? Let’s talk about the Task Simplification
👇🧵 A common misconception about Representative Learning Design: The games need to fully represent the game.

But full game scenarios can be too chaotic for learning, while isolated drills remove key game info.

The answer? Task Simplification-Reduce without impoverishing

The warm up is one of the most under utilised parts of a session.

But by incorporating more activities into your warm up you can take it to the next level.

Here I go through I how design my warm up (including examples from various sports) Traditionally the warm up usually focuses on preparing the body, but there should be so much more to it

It should require the players to be making decisions right from the off

The warm up is often one of the most under utilised parts of a session.

But it doesn't have to be

In fact it can become one of the most important parts of a session if used correctly

Here are 12 examples of warm up activities (so you can design better warm ups straight away) There are examples from youth sport to elite sport that coaches could adapt to suit their own context.

I’ve tried to include some lower intensity and higher intensity examples.

It's important to note the warm up is much more than just physically preparing the body to move.

Effective environment design is crucial for learning

And luckily, environment design is a skill.

But most people have never tried to learn – because no one showed them where to start.

So here are 4 Environment Design Principles(so you can start learning today): In this thread I'll breakdown each of the Environment Design Principles and then I give some practical tips for coaches on what they need to know to apply them in their own sessions

I'd recommend starting out with one and doing it well if you are getting started with the CLA

What is the most important thing for coaches to understand to enhance skill learning in practice?

'Constraining to Afford'

Here's what you need to know and some brilliant examples of this in practice

🧵👇🧵 Skill learning is based on people learning to adjust to the environment by recognizing and taking advantage of affordances in the environment.

Constraint-led coaching creates practices that gives players chances to get ‘more sensitive’ to these affordances

Designing effective practice environments is crucial if we want our players to get the most out of training.

Unfortunately, most coaches aren't taught how to do this properly.

Luckily there's a model that can help you with this in any sport

Here's how
🧵👇🧵 By designing learning environments that are safe yet uncertain we can develop players that are better able to adapt and make decisions.

This framework was originally designed by @skillacq and K Davids and it’s a fantastic resource for coaches of all levels

Knowing how to get started with the Constraints Led Approach can be tough.

So I asked my followers what advice they’d give to coaches and there was fantastic responses which I've narrowed down.

Here's 10 great tips that will save you 100's of hours
🧵👇🧵 #1 Constrain to Afford
This was by far the most popular response to the question.

When using constraints in this way we view them as ‘informative boundaries’. They don’t cause specific actions but we could exclude some options. When used this way we promote decision making

Scaling is a crucial topic for coaches to understand.

Applying it correctly will help you develop more skillfull players.

This thread will save you lots of time & frustration giving you exactly what you need to know about scaling
🧵👇🧵 Skills are performed with more success and with more desirable movement patterns when the size of equipment is matched to a player's developmental stage.

When the activities are scaled inappropriately it will have a negative effect on learning

This brilliant video captures this

https://twitter.com/15518965/status/439143430120558593

Designing effective practice tasks is crucial for coaches.

But most coaches are never shown how to do this properly.

Luckily this 5 part framework will save you 100's of hours of trial and error and help you design more effective tasks straight away (with examples) In this thread:
-I introduce the Framework
-Breakdown the 5 components
-Give examples of effectively designed tasks

Helping athletes become more skilful is something that every coach hopes to achieve.

But how do elite coaches & athletes do this when preparing for an Olympics?

Here's 5 lessons to that you can use in your own coaching to develop skill more effectively

mrtenniscoach.com/2023/01/embrac… This was a fantastic case study by @MorrisCraig_ , @fab_otte, M Rothwell & Keith Davids

It gives us a unique insight into the preparation of elite athletes for an Olympic Games and how skill training plays a huge role in this.

While there were so many takeaways here were my 5

Players centred learning environments are crucial for developing skills

But designing these can be a challenge for coaches.

This chapter gives some great tips on how to design these environments more effectively to develop more skillful players
👇🧵👇
mrtenniscoach.com/2022/12/overvi… There are so many great insights in the chapter around

-Non-Linear Pedagogy & Ecological Dynamics
-Implementing these ideas through the CLA
-Learning environment design

I'll give a quick summary before mainly focuing on designing player centred environments.

A knowledge of Skill Acquisition is powerful for coaches.

But most coaches find the literature inaccessible or aren't even made aware of it.

Luckily there are 5 guiding principles of Skill Acquisition that coaches can use to immediately design more effective sessions. #1 Training Design main stimulus for learning

The tasks that the players are interacting with in training will have the biggest impact on their learning.

Coaches can (co)design more stimulating tasks for/with their players by using the Constraints-Led Approach.

https://twitter.com/1205239927786688514/status/1551865121068269569

The #SMSC22 had over 20 highly informative speakers over the 2 days.

The Sports Movement Skill Conference is always great event that has had a huge impact on my growth as a coach over the years.

Here are 10 takeaways for coaches from the 2022 edition I made it to as many presentations as I could over the two days but missed a few which I'm looking forward to catching up on.

I took so much from each presentation but I constrained myself to only having 10 takeaways for the purpose of the thread

Erling Haaland has taken the Premier League by storm.

But contrary to popular belief he's not a robot that was created in a lab

A case study done on his youth team gives some interesting insights into his development

Here's 5 insights for coaches (of any sport)
👇🧵👇 The 5 insights that stood out for me were:
1. Development>Success
2. Diversification within & beyond sport
3.Influence of the environment
4.Different pathways for different goals
5.Influence of coaches

Being able to simplify tasks effectively is a powerful skill for coaches to have.

Thinking of ‘fishtanks’ can help coaches do this more effectively.

Here's how:
👇🧵👇 Sometimes the full scale version of the game would be too difficult for the learner, especially at the early stages of learning. If we 'threw them in at the deep end' they would be overwhelmed and really struggle.

A common misconception is that the Constraint-Led Approach is not suitable when coaching beginners.

But the CLA actually works BETTER with beginners in my opinion.

Here's how you can coach more effectively using CONSTRAINTS with these 7 tips:
🧵👇🧵 The following are the 7 tips for coaches when using the CLA with beginners.
1. Keep em coupled
2. Guided Discovery
3. Relevant constraints for stage of learning
4. CLA with RLD
5. Reduce without impoverishing
6. Safe but uncertain
7. Challenge sweet spot

The framework of Ecological Dynamics has become increasingly popular amongst coaches

But what can the theory behind it offer high performance sport practitioners?

This paper gives a great insight into some of the things it can offer

👇🧵👇
mrtenniscoach.com/2022/10/learni… This was a brilliant paper by @ConstraintsColl, Keith Davids and @markstkhlm that is a must read for all practitioners.

There was so much to takeaway from it that it will be impossible to do it justice in the thread but I'll try my best

We want to guide our players towards discovering solutions rather than just giving them the answer.

Learning is more powerful when done this way.

A common question from coaches is “What if the player just wants to know the answer?

Here's exactly what to do in 4 steps: 1. Build a relationship with the player(s)

We need to make sure we have a positive relationship with the player(s). Skill Acquisition is an important part of coaching but the 'soft skills' underpin our ability to implement it effectively in our coaching.

Every organisation wants to be able to identify the next big talent.

But current 'talent evaluation tests' are actually terrible at doing this.

Here's why (and what to do instead)
👇🧵👇
mrtenniscoach.com/2022/09/the-ro… Current protocols for identifying talented individuals are flawed in design and lead to a ‘wastage’ of talent.

There are some high case examples of highly successful athletes that failed talent evaluation tests but were extremely successful in their sport.

https://twitter.com/18812572/status/1091343099119521793

Better learning is a goal anyone working in sport or education aims to achieve.

To achieve this we need to deeply understand what learning is

This paper on the notion of 'Enskillment' proposes that learning is inseparable from doing and a place.

👇🧵👇

mrtenniscoach.com/2022/08/enskil… After reading this article you’ll better understand

•The different views of skill learning and education in sport
•What Enskillment is and the ideas behind it
•How the key entangled components of enskillment can be applied within sport