We have concentrated on adults in this blog. All of our writers have, however, coached kids and teenagers as well and junior floorball is very close to our hearts. Here’s a short example about a complex training session for kids, in this case let’s say U10 juniors. Rink time 60 minutes.
Before the practice
We start the training session with a handshake / fist bump with all the players. We say “Hello” to each other and the coach tells key points about today’s session. After that we go to a circle, put our arms around each other and start with some positive words. Maybe we want to shout the team’s name together or something similar.
Goals: Create a positive and safe atmosphere from the start, togetherness, team routines
Warm up 20-30 minutes
Warm up consists of play and games.
1. “Everybody burns”
Equipment:
2-3 soft balls
20x20 meters zone (grass, concrete etc.)
Rules:
Everybody try to “burn” everyone in the zone. If you are hit with a ball, you get a “penalty” for 1 minutes and go outside the zone. You can get back inside sooner if the player who hit you with the ball is himself burned.
You can’t move with the ball
You don’t burn if the ball bounces from the floor
You don’t burn if you get hit to the head
Variations:
You only get back to the game if the player who burned you gets burned
You don’t get back to the game, “Last man standing” (not the best option for a warm up)
More balls
During penalty, you do some simple physical exercise, for example 10 X-jumps
2. Different tag games
Simple tag game but with variations with the movement and / or what you do if you get caught
Normal movement
Move with one leg
Move with “bear walk”
Move with “crab walk”
When you get caught,
“Bridge tag” - wait in plank position - you are saved if another player crawls under you
“Squat tag” - wait in deep squat position - you are saved when another player gives you a high five
etc.
Floorball session (60 minutes)
The goals of the session:
Skills:
With the ball:
passing (with a purpose)
Looking for space / scanning
Pass if your teammate is in better position - dribble if not
Without the ball:
offering passing options (support)
Team level:
everybody attacks, everybody defends
Communicate with your teammate
Positive encouragement to try, fail and try again
Example group:
15 players with diverse skill levels + 2 goalies
1. a) 4v1 // b) 1v1+joker SSG(about 15 minutes if familiar, 20 if first time)
a) Two groups of five play 4v1 Possession game
Zone: 10x10 meters square marked with cones
Players: 5 (4 attackers, 1 defender)
Rules:
Four attackers are positioned at each side. They try to keep possession of the ball against a defender who can’t defend outside of the square. The four attackers should pass the ball always without rushing. If the defender intercepts the ball, the player who passed the ball goes inside.
Variations:
set time as a defender - if the defender intercepts the ball, he gives it back to the attackers
Set time as a defender - if the defender intercepts the ball, he tries to keep it while at the same time two attackers come to inside the circle and try to take the ball back
b) One group of five play 1v1+joker SSG with goalies
Zone: 20x6-8 meters, narrow playing field to encourage direct 1v1/2v1 challenges
Players: 5 (two teams of 2, 1 joker) + 2 goalies
Rules:
Play 1v1 (set shifts, 20-30 seconds) and a joker who is always on the side of the team that has the ball (numeral superiority). Encourage shooting to score to use that man advantage.
Variations:
joker plays with the team that doesn’t have the ball (underload)
Picture: On the left side we play 2 x 4v1 possession game, on the right side 1v1+joker SSG with goalies
Every group of five plays two times 4v1 and once 1v1+joker SSG. Play about 4minutes, 1 minute break and change of place.
2. 2v2 to four goals (15 minutes)
Zone: 15x20 meters (x2, both ends of the field)
Players: 8+7 + 2 goalies (four teams of four*)
* one team of three
Rules:
Set up two playing fields where there is two goals at each end. Two goals can be big goals (goalies) and the other 6 should be small goals or if there’s not enough small goals, you can also use cones. Play 2v2 games, the team can score to either of the goals in their attacking end. The idea behind this game is to help the players to use the width of the playing field.
Play 30 second shifts, 3-4 minute games, count the score (if you want) but start every time from 0-0. Change the opponent after each game.
Picture: 2v2 to four goals, 2 separate games at both ends. If you don't have enough small goals, use cones.
3. 2v2 + 2v2“The Cross game” (20-25 minutes)
Zone: 20x20 meters (half the field)
Players: 15 (four teams of four*) + goalies
* one team of three
Rules:
Play 2 simultaneous 2v2 games; one game is played vertically and one horizontally. Two big goals with goalies in one game, small goals in the other game. You must cross the (imaginery) midfield lane before you can score. The substitutes wait behind their own goal. 30 second shifts, 3 minute games and change the opponent. Key thing to ask players before the game - “What do you have to remember when there is two games played at the same time?” or “What should you do to avoid collisions?” (Answer usually comes quite fast).
There are couple of big ideas behind this game - first of all, it’s a fun game. Second, the players will self-organise and reduce their running speed almost automatically and start to scan their surroundings. Third, and this is more of a training structure thing - all the players are very active all the time. You can actually make 32 - even 40 players active this way if you use both ends of the field.
I like to play a small tournament in this cross game where we first play “a regular season” (2 points for win, 1 for draw) and after the regular season, we play the final and the bronze game.
Variations:
use jokers
Picture: 2v2 + 2v2 The Cross Game. You can even play two 15-20 player Cross games simultaneously.
After the practice
We might want to do some cool down and / or mobility exercise after the training session if you find it useful. In any case, after the session, the coach can ask if we had fun, what was the key points of the session and after that, hands together and shout the teams name.
Few sidenotes
What I try to do with young kids sessions is to create a “street floorball” -like environment with simple games and lot of decision-making action. I sometimes might use 2-3 minutes to show some technical movements what they can try to do at home if they don’t have the possibility to play the game with friends. The goal is to make the sessions as fun and engaging as possible and the idea behind it is that the games would continue back home.
There’s also some words to be said about the team structure. It is preferable to keep the teams local as long as possible to encourage the playing outside the training sessions - play before the practice with friends, come with the same friends to the practice and then go back home to play again with the same friends. This dynamic is threatened if we start to create “elite teams” where players travel longer distance. It also usually takes the costs up which then reduces the possibilities to do multiple sports.
Patterns of play that are more or less similar appear repeatedly in floorball as in other invasion team sports. They are emergent and thus cannot be predicted or predetermined. They happen in a chaotic environment as a result of coordinated interaction between the players and the environment mainly without central control. No single leader commands the whole team during the play. The team shares principles of play that they conform to (in addition to the rules of the game). These may be learned explicitly and/or implicitly - usually both. Ideally a particular pattern is an outcome of functional playing, not a mean to achieve a result.
Self-organization is a principle of complex adaptive systems that can explain such collective behaviour. The parts of a system organize themselves according to the information perceived from the environment and simple principles that they obey together. When the principles are functional and unambigious to each individual the system self-organizes itself as a whole. The team becomes more than the sum of its parts and has emergent properties that the individuals do not have.
According to the systems view, the essential properties of an organism or living system, are properties of the whole, which none of the parts have. They arise from the interactions and relationships among the parts. These properties are destroyed when the system is dissected, either physically or theoretically, into isolated elements. Although we can discern individual parts in any system, these parts are not isolated, and the nature of the whole is always different from the mere sum of its parts
-Fritjof Capra: The Web of Life
It is not enough to explicitly explain the principles to the players and walk through them a couple times. They need a lot of repetitions without repetition in a realistic context to learn the know-how of playing according to the principles. This way players learn to couple their perception (information) and action (movement) and can reflect on mistakes and successes. They need to be able to (inter)act under pressure in a limited time when there is less time for analysis. This implies also that it is important to keep along the principles in most of the team training and not separate perception and action.
Coaching the team according to playing principles implies the need to study the game deeply to form a game model that consists of explicit playing principles. Training is designed to teach playing according the principles both explicitly and implicitly. The environment should be representative of the game. Instead of simply demanding training hard and repetitions, the coach focuses on learning. Learning to play includes the technical and physical dimensions of course.
Floorball example
An example of a principle-based defensive organization that promotes self-organization according to local interactions could be as follows. This defensive system aims in minimizing the spaces to defend close to the opponents ball carrier. A well working and adaptive defensive organization may emerge even from a team with "less talented" defensive players this way.
“If I have to defend this whole garden, I’m the worst. If I have to defend this small area, I’m the best.” -Johan Cruyff
Defending principles for the defensive zone:
Pressure the ball carrier on the defensive zone (assuming numerical balance)
Every defender has an opponent on his responsibility (awareness of the positioning of the opponents players)
Make gaps smaller close to the opponents ball carrier.
Sub-principles for these main principles:
Direction of pressure: Try to steer the game towards the sides and out towards the opponents defensive zone
Mark closely any opponents in the centre. Directly dangerous off-the-ball opponents are defended "man-based".
Help the teammate who is challenged as much as you can without letting your own opponent free in a dangerous position. If your opponent is out in the corner or far away on their defensive zone, you may even double-team the ball carrier.
If a team learns these principles and their application well enough, the defense is able to adapt to the opponents offensive organization. Some kind of adaptation would anyway happen but this principle-based defense will allow the self-organization to happen without constraints of a defensive formation. The order in this system is dynamic, not static. Defending players get support from teammates and shouldn't have to defend a big space 1vs1 against the opponents ball carrier. The space behind the player defending the ball carrier and the gaps in between teammates close to ball is minimized which makes it more challenging for the opponents to find space to penetrate.
Moving the striker closer to the defender on the strong side is nothing new in floorball. With the principles of this example, if the ball is passed to the red defender on the strong side, the same forward should return to pressurize him. A common alternative is to move the weak side forward towards the centre but this might create a vicious cycle of compensations and exceptions.
According to the principles above, the striker may scale their supporting action to suit the situation. She makes the decision on how low to drop so that she still makes it in time to pressure her "own" opponent if a pass is made to her. For example, the blue defender needs more support against a very skillful dribbler - especially if the defender is positioned further away and does not shoot often or well. Instead of having constant formations and triggers for double-teaming "all-in", this organization leaves room for self-organization of the defensive formation.
The opponent is allowed to make some passes on the sides where the receiver is not directly dangerous. As the ball carrier is pressured, mistakes are more likely to happen and a bad pass may be intercepted or the receiver pressured immediately after one. Two players may double-team the ball carrier when all the opponents players are not posing urgent threat. The players make the decisions themselves, but they are thoroughly prepared and to conform to the shared principles.
Training the principles
The principles may be trained in different game scenarios from the whole 5vs5 game down. To model game-like repetitions, a simple 4vs2 rondo could be used as an example. The players off-the-ball (blue) are coached to defend according to the team principles:
The player pressuring the ball carrier tries to steer the movement and passes away from the corner
She will try to take away the option to pass the ball towards the end of the defensive zone.
The second blue player drops close enough to close the gap in between the blue players and cut the pass to the centre
She will try to cut passes or "arrive with the ball" to pressure the red player close to the middle line of the field
By comparing the game situation above and this example of a rondo exercise we can observe similarity between them. Now the players get to practice their skills with specificity to the game and get repetitions with a clear purpose. They can adjust their technical and physical actions to the opponents (as well as the teammates) and learn to couple their perception and action better during the process. The team learns interpersonal coordination as the players get used to each others ways of interacting in these situations. Training happens in a playful and competitive environment to engage emotions.
Other rondo or positional play exercises may also be built to suit the needs of an individual team, coach and specific players. Teammates and opponents may be added and the playing area modified to adjust the skill level needed, physical actions profile or complexity of the training. For example a progression could be using of a 5vs3 exercise (4+1 vs 3) to move towards the whole game situation.
Now the team may also self-organize to play a more compact defense against a strong opponent and maybe spread a little more to give pressure faster against a weaker team. As the spaces to defend are constantly made small collectively, even less talented defenders may succeed in their objective. This is an emergent property because it is specific to the team that is organized this way. It is a result of interactions between players, not only players learning individual skills or improving their properties. Not saying they wouldn't improve and learn those properties and skills while training this way.
Disclaimer: this is not an attempt to define a "correct" way to defend, just an example of a defensive organization that is based less in individual execution of a system and more in flexible interaction and cooperation between teammates.
Deep simplicity
With a coaching and learning process according to principles of complex adaptive systems, achieving transfer into the match performance might become simpler (though maybe not "easier") than the reductionist manner of separating physical, technical, tactical and mental dimensions and individuals. The principles of self-organization and emergence are intuitively quite appropriate to understand an invasion team sport phenomena. There is even research showing how basketball teams and games have similarities to self-organizing systems of the nature.
"Many researchers consider basketball to be a random sport (according to a Poisson probability distribution), but the reality is actually much more complex, just as in natural systems," -Yves de Saá Guerra
“If the world is complex, then acting congruently with that complexity can be simpler than trying to control a machine that does not exist.” ―Embracing Complexity
“We need another paradigm that informs us to make better decisions.” -Jean Boulton
According to the complexity paradigm, a team really may act as a whole, may be observed that way and can have its own collective intelligence. The team should also be coached as more than individuals - training interaction, not just action.
Emergence = Emergence occurs when "the whole is different from the sum of the parts". Interactions between the parts of a system and the environment allow the system to develop properties that the individuals do not have.
Self-organization = Larger scale order arises from local interactions between the parts of a system and its environment
Complex adaptive system = A system that cannot be understood by looking at the parts only. Such system is capable of self-organization, learning and evolution.
There is an ongoing dispute in finnish floorball discussion on the future of finnish floorball and the coaching policies of the federation. We have been writing against the oversimplified view of the game as multiple 1vs1-situations. There are ways for the abstraction of the game using the different moments of the game and the areas on the field. The selection of the viewpoint directly affects the interventions that the coaches choose to improve the team and individual players. How we see the game is an important coaching-philosophical choice: do we see the game as a whole complex system or do we simplify it in a linear fashion into separate parts - neglecting the interactions.
Invasion team sports are games of space and time. Those are variables that depend on the interactions of multiple players. Every action of an individual player (including the actions without actually moving) become interactions with the environment and the rest of the players on the field. Playing is interacting, not just being athletic or having capabilities.
The more we focus on separate actions, the more responsibility is left to the players to learn the correct moment for each action. Using training time out of the team floorball sessions to train actions without game context costs valuable time from this learning process unless they are rigourously justified as steps of this learning. A floorball coaches responsibility is also to actively teach the players how to interact - that is to actually play floorball better. The least she can do is to provide an environment for the players to learn it themselves.
An individual player cannot properly learn the complex skill of a team sport as homework, alone. The opposite would be much more logical: use the team training time to maximally improve the interpersonal coordination of the team by training floorball interactions. Interaction includes action, so this time is not taken away from individual technique development either. The players could then perform supplementary training to hone their technical and physical skills alone or together during their own time. Even better if they have the opportunity to play street games and hone their skills in a game environment.
Motor learning theory and floorball interactions
Often we hear the argument that a player first needs to learn the movement patterns and repeat them until they are filed in the "muscle memory". Only after this is she able to perform them under pressure in a game context. This is the case according to contemporary motor skill and motor learning theories. It is very much possible to learn new skills in a game situation. That is how children also learn - by playing. People do not work like a machine: storing action scripts in their memory and running them at a correct moment. Instead we learn to adapt into a sport-specific environment. Technical details are variable, even though the repetitions have similar features. Our bodies have much in common after all. For example, players learn to deliver the ball to her teammates in variable situations. The players have individual differences in their passing and shooting techniques - or even better, they have totally different strengths and weaknesses. This is true even on the top level. According to complexity framework, such diversity is an advantage for the system.
During a “holistic” learning process of playing the game, technical and physical qualities are also challenged and improved in an integrated training approach. The physical intensity of a game-like exercise may sometimes be even higher than of the competition because of more recovery during the training session. Controlling the demands of an exercise might happen by varying the size of the playing area, recovery breaks and the number of teammates and opponents. This also varies the type of the physical stumulus of the session.
Interpersonal coordination
The individuals of a team always interact and (self)organize in order to cooperate - even when the team did not deliberately train tactics for every game situation. This is called interpersonal coordination. Skilled individuals might be able connect with their teammates in smaller space, less support and generally in more challenging situations. That is, during less organized moments. However, improving the coordination of a team is not exclusive to improving the individual. The players get physical and technical repetitions during game-like training. Training in representative game situations may then be better use of the time. The coach controls the technical and physical demands of the training, providing suitable technical and physical stimuli but the aim is also for the interpersonal system to learn to coordinate better. Such approach also makes the technical and physical training specific and the transfer of training more likely.
Figure 1. The blue team ball carrier is under pressure and might lose the ball. He does not have many good passing options or space to dribble into. In case of negative transition, the blue team defensive balance is off and they would most likely suffer a dangerous counterattack.
Figure 2. The blue team has organized their offensive play and have better structure. With a simple movement, a teammate might be able to create space for the ball carrier to move into. Also the rest of the blue players offer more support to and all the while the blue team also has a better balance in case of a negative transition.
As the previous figures demonstrate, by organizing the team better during the offensive moments it is possible to perform better even when the ball carrier has problems maintaining possession under pressure, in a small space. Creating space by movements off-the-ball and having a balanced positioning may help the team thrive even if their player do not have the skills to dribble past good defenders in a small space. In situations like this it would be easy - but lazy - to blame it on the individual who was not technical, strong or fast enough to win her "1vs1". This conclusion would lead in different interventions than explained above.
Implications for training are the use of realistic game situations, either specific to the problematic situation or general game-like training where the players learn to solve similar situations. Some examples were shown in a previous blog.
An example: Indidual or interpersonal?
The finnish federation has used the following video clip to demonstrate that the mens national team players lack linear speed. The situation builds from poorly executed offensive moment and a high pressing defensive moment after that. Sweden is able to play out of pressure, making the pass to Svahn who gets the ball into slightly ahead of Piha. Now the situation is 3vs2 for the swedish team with the right lane defender having a problematic body shape and being unable to pressure Svahn. It ends up in a dangerous 2vs1 for Sweden.
Video 1. This example was also discussed in Perttu Kytöhonka’s earlier blog.
In my own recent blog post I analyzed the finnish teams high pressing during the EFT tournament. It is interesting to note that similar problems seem to occur even with a fast player like S. Johansson trying to maybe a bit slower player like J. Samuelsson:
Video 2. FIN-SWE 0-4 goal from the most recent EFT tournament
Now it depends on the coaching philosophy if you believe it is the best approach to pick faster players to the national team, get the chosen players run faster - or train the team with the tactical intention of organizing these moments of the game at least slightly better at the same time (having the players train situation-specific individual qualities at the same time)?
Adopting the complexity lens will imply the nature of the game is about interpersonal coordination - floorball interactions. This means the team is trying to accomplish tactical tasks with variable means but according to shared team principles. The principles create options for the players to choose and help them self-organize (choose suitable options) to solve the game situation themselves.
This approach reduces the need of finding the individual culprit who gets the blame for causing a problematic situation - as long as the whole team plays according to the team principles. Organizing the offensive moments keeping in mind the possible negative transition (and preparing for it) also empowers the ball carrier to challenge herself without the fear of failure in case of unsuccesful dribbles for example. Such approach is beneficial especially for a developing or a youth team.
Further reading: Mark O'Sullivan's great blog. He spoke about football interactions in the second scientific conference on motor skill acquisition in Kisakallio (november 2017).
Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better -Albert Einstein
Floorball is a young sport and therefore it still has a huge margin for development - not just economically, but as a game. While floorball has its own special features, it is not separate from other invasion team sports. There is a lot to learn from the international knowledge sources of other invasion team sports. They all have a lot in common - regardless of the playing surface or the equipment used to control the ball or puck. The relationships, patterns and interactions between players, the ball, space and time form similar patterns although the details may differ. Likewise in nature, certain patterns are repeated in the interactions and forms of different organisms and objects - for example the golden ratio.
Figure 1. Repeating patterns, fractals of nature: In plants or snowflakes, the same shape appears repeatedly on a different scale.
Following team sports with longer history of evolution and scientific research, new framework for understanding the game as collective behaviour could be brought to floorball. Work and research already made by others might be utilized by recognizing the patterns and common principles among sports. Such integration of our young sport to the global pool of invasion sports knowledge could help floorball adopt more contemporary methodologies and philosophies of team sports instead of individual-based reductionist sports science. Development of the game and players would inevitably follow. In this context, the concept of “tactics” may be interpreted as taking the context and interactions into account, thus focusing on improving the whole team instead of focusing on individuals. Contrary to the public discussion which is downplaying tactics (especially in Finland), tactics are actually not discussed or trained enough. One reason is that there is little if any academic research on the collective behaviour or tactics of team sports in the leading floorball countries, Finland for example. So instead, loose comments on individual player performance dominate the press conferences. Often certain single situations and mistakes are thought to decide the match winner. Floorball is seen almost as an individual sport.
The training of tactics does not have to consist of a coach drawing set plays that the players are expected to execute without adapting to situations. It is modern tactical training in particular that builds game sense, as it prepares players to find better solutions in real game situations. Criticizing tactical focus in training still refers to these (rigid) set play traditions, as there is no common lanFor example soccer science has compared a team with superorganisms formed by animals. A lot of resources are used to analyze and better understand the tactical performance in team sports. This data is utilized in everyday work of the teams. This is where floorball should be heading instead of separating individual performance indices out of context. In more advanced ball games, belittleing the importance of tactics is less common and the success or failure is not accounted to coincidences and unlucky bounces. In floorball it is still disputed whether the game belongs to players or coaches. The correct answer would be that the game belongs to whole teams and is a complex system of interdependencies. The visions from our leading coaches on how developing better individuals is the main factor of future success emphasizes this gap in philosophies with top level team sports.
Especially in such moments when success does not come in any way or another, the accumulation of personal errors on the altar is more natural than digging the cause and effect relationships from the whole. The game is not won by an individual bump, mistake or whistle, but by the team that makes more goals during the whole match. In the moment of success the role of an individual becomes even more pronounced. Attempting to copy what has happened is usually seen as the best way to the next victory. It is also customary to worship the talented individuals - even to a degree of forming a cult of personality (e.g. Patrik Laine) - instead of analyzing where the team was better than the opponent as a whole, collective.
Figure 2. From the left: chaos & individuals without connections. On the right: a completely rigid structure without any freedom for the individual. In the middle: complex structures create recurrent connections in the middle of chaos. In other words, you could describe an team sport belonging to individuals chaotic, or belonging in totality to the coach as a rigid machine. Complexity on the other hand, works like swarm intelligence in nature. (Source: https://methodkit.com/thoughts-behind/)
"I agree that ‘the footballer owns the game’ but I disagree with general belief that football belongs to the plyaers. In fact it doesn’t belong to players or coaches, or to the fans or even the directors. It belongs to the teams." - Pep Guardiola (Marti Perarnau: Pep Guardiola - The Evolution)
Getting a team to play (tactically) sound game together as a whole is the most important task of a coach in most international team sports. Tactics as a word mean all the concrete actions and choices taken to achieve objectives in the game. It is more than a couple set plays. Tactics do not take away the creativity of the players, but are a critical dimension of the competition between the teams. At the heart of the discussion in floorball, however, seems to be the individual's talent, technique and physicality.
Reasonable & well balanced Algeria #passmap. Full-backs cover the flanks, wingers operate in half spaces, nice midfield distribution.#AFCONpic.twitter.com/7ynuaKru2x
Team performance analysis might still be a luxure of the richest organizations but in the future it could change our perception of the game. The interaction between players and teams is what really should be measured. To a large extent the game happens between the players - interactions.
The history of team sports has shown that co-operation and teamwork can make a group of players better than the sum of individual skill. It is vital for the team that the players think of the game with clear and common principles. It is like having a common language or a collective instinct. Playing together as a collective is a value that, makes it possible for the lesser or cheaper roster to challenge to nominally higher ranked club.
Building up of the collective play is a complex process. Everything has an impact on it. The coach and the team are required to do a lot of things well. Coaching, like the game itself, is a complex phenomenon full of interactions between players and different entities. It cannot be simplified to examining the individuals and their physical-technical properties, training programs, repetitions, previous results and statistics alone. The improvement in results does not happen in a linear fashion. Human sciences such as psychology, pedagogy and sociology, are an essential component of coaching.
We have set up this blog in order to raise awareness of the contemporary framework of team sports through which the game may be understood in a deeper and more meaningful way. It is an alternative to the reductionist isolation of individuals and their properties discarding the context. The game is a whole that can be "zoomed" deeper, but should not be reduced to parts without the interactions between them. Playing the game is a dialogue between two teams. Each individual is interdependent to the rest of the players.
Conversations comparing the individual and the collective as frames of reference often become a confrontation of opposites. Opinions are categorized either pro collective or individualistic. In reality these extremes do not truly exclude one another. It is only the discussion that gets polarised. This text covers the relationship between the individual and the collective and the problems of the conversation. There is no collective without individuals - the team consists of individuals, so the individual and the team cannot be separate things. They are inseparable and complementary. In team sports it is the collective that is competing, not the individuals. The concept “team” includes the individuals, but also consists of their interactions and interdependencies forming a complex system. Individualism on the other hand does not put up well with the benefit of a collective.
Figure 1. An individual is logically a subset of a team.The group “team” includes the individuals and thus is a wider frame of reference for understanding the whole. Looking at the actions of an individual only works in special cases and in sufficiently small details.
The goals scored in a match count for the team. Individual statistics are not the deciding factor for the result of the match (which team wins). Teams compete interacting with each other as whole systems. When a team wins, the individuals win. As the team develops, the individuals are also developing. Of course it is possible to win games without developing.
The complexity framework
Floorball is an invasion sport in which space and time are fundamental variables. They depend on the location and interaction of multiple players. Every player has an impact on the game situation and to possible solutions in the game. Simply the positioning of an individual player affects the spaces created on the field. In this sense, a true 1vs1 situation does not exist in an invasion sport.
Because of the interactions between the parts, the invasion game is defined as a complex system. These interactions allow the system to develop features that do not exist in individual parts of it. For this reason, the game cannot be deeply understood if these interdependencies are overlooked. The team (as well as the individual) is a complex system. Thus, neither the individual nor the 1vs1 situation cannot be isolated from the game environment if general conclusions of the game are to be made. Through the complexity paradigm, we seek to understand the game as a whole. This does not mean complication by adding variables, rather the game is explained by some simple principles - but in a different way.
Figure 2. Logically, the "isolated 1vs1" in a big space is a subset (special case) of floorball.In majority of the situations, it is not sensible to ignore the interactions with the rest of the players.
There are situations in which a player faces an opponent in a large space, so that the interactions of other players with these two are weaker. In such a case, the interactions could be temporarily ignored. These are exceptions that emerge as a result of collective behaviour - not a starting point for analyzing the game. Ignoring the interactions between players should be justified with careful analysis.
An "isolated individualistic performance" does not exist in the game. Every action - even standing still - affects other players and the emergence of spaces in between. Just positioning oneself may be a vital contribution to the team's performance such as attracting the opponent's defender and making space for teammates. Playing floorball is collective action - the game happens between players. You cannot play alone.
How does all this influence our practice?
The frame of reference and the language we use, affect how deeply we understand the game. This directly affects our activities in everyday life. If we want floorball to evolve, we must try to look at it through a more modern lens. The framework of complexity takes into account the above-mentioned interactions and collective behaviour. Individuals are not removed from it, but placed in the context of the game.
"There's Nothing More Practical Than A Good Theory" -Kurt Lewin
Interactions between teams and players set their own expectations for the skills that the game demands from a player. Opponents constrain the actions of an individual player. She needs to react and anticipate opponents and teammates actions that form the dynamic game environment. Isolated physical or technical training do not include the psychological abilities of adapting to the environment, which are crucial in floorball. A player's skill is not about the ability to perform high-quality technical and physical actions alone. Those should be performed for a real reason and also adapted to the actual situation on hand. This requires constant perception of essential information in the middle of the chaos of the game. Collective training of tactical situations enables the learning of this. Perception is intertwined with action and thus translates to interaction.Emphasizing individual technique or skill over the whole skill eliminates alternatives, mistakes, chaos, and disturbances. This is against specificity of training. The player doesn’t learn to match perception of game information and the technical actions. On the other hand, individual technique and fitness, do not disappear from collective training. Instead they happen in a representative context. Volume and (relative) intensity of training are accumulated to a sufficient degree from playing exercises. We should be looking for the minimum effective dose of training load that keeps the players developing, especially at the youth level. Instead, currently the individual physical properties are maximized in a hurry comparing players quantitatively with others in the same age group. In worst cases it is the training load that is maximized.
Technique and fitness are subordinate to the tactical dimension, because they are always tactical in the context of a game - they affect the game situation. A player spends the majority of the game without the ball. Even the best players make mistakes that must be collectively reacted to. These skills must also be actively coached, not dismissed.
A game situation cannot always be solved by quantitative amount of technical skill or fitness. Adapting by performing a suitable action is critical. Forcing the play with weak decisions will cause problems even if the individual wins her direct 1vs1-situation. Often, it is necessary to feint and surprise the opponent as a collective as well as individually. A player could dribble towards a gap in the opponents defensive line to attract and move them, then pass to a space created behind the line. Our own team should be able to anticipate such collective actions somehow, supporting the dribbler and observing the new space. Technically and physically the solutions may be "creative" but they should somehow align tactically to common principles of play. When a ball crosses the goal-line in accordance to the rules of the game, the goal registered as a goal regardless of the technique. Coaching such principles of play instead of techniques alone, makes the game model flexible and forms a language of game actions.
Figure 3. The best transfer-effect happens when training is designed taking into account all aspects of the game.First, choose the tactical goal and the moments of the game that you want to develop.After that, psychological training methods are planned, such as giving feedback and keeping score. Next come the optional added technical constraints and finally the physical demands by distribution of recovery breaks during the exercise.In Tactical Periodization methodology, training is designed in such hiearchy.
Players are communicating nonverbally in the game using floorball actions. The game model is their language. It must be flexible but clear enough. This needs a lot of focused training. An example could be as follows. The ball carrier dribbles, attracting one or two opponents towards the ball. He may keep them following until the pressure gets too high. This asks for support in certain available directions, and commands a possible teammate who is positioned on the way of the dribble to move and find space elsewhere. Clear principles create order in the chaos. A good team plays like "one organism", with fluent nonverbal communication. They form something of a ‘collective instinct’.
Training collectively in real game situations will afford the corresponding technical and physical (as well as psychologically competitive) repetitions without repetition. Traditionally, the technical skill of an individual is developed through the amount of repetitions of an explicit model technique. This is simply not how we acquire or perform skills. Even in very closed skill such as shooting, the skillful athletes technical details vary more than for the less skillful ones. Technique varies, but accuracy is better. A great shooter focuses on hitting the target, not how this is technically achieved. Variation is inevitable. In an invasion sport, adaptation and variation are manifold. Considering this in training design is critical.
Modern skill acquisition theory and the Constraints Led Approach
The design of modern skill training (Chow et al. 2016) implements the following starting points:
The exercise must represent the competition.
Manipulating the constraints will guide learning in the desired direction.
Combining information and movement, that is, observing your body and the environment is central.
Attention will be directed to the goal of the movement, not to the details.
The above principles are based on constraints led approach (CLA) and non-linear pedagogy. These methodologies were strongly highlighted at the Scientific Conference on Motor Skill Acquisition during the Autumn in Kisakallio. According to CLA, an organism (an individual or a group) is given a task that is solved while adapting to an environment. The constraints create a space (the triangle), within which the organism begins to solve the motor problem, self-organizing its actions.
Figure 4. Visualization of the constraints led approach.The constraints create a space within which the organism continuously perceives the environment in order to match actions to the information of the situation.Perception and action are intertwined, not sequential steps during the process.
These contemporary theories of motor learning challenge our traditional concepts of learning. We do not act, learn or remember like a computer. The brain cannot store and retrieve countless different precise movement patterns from the memory and run them through like a script. Environment and context affect our memories. Techniques are not remembered, they emerge when an organism perceives the environment and matches its activity with the observed information. Perception is not just visual and conscious. It also happens through motion, proprioception etc. and is partly subconscious.
Performance depends on coordinating our actions with perceived information. What the player perceives is the meaning of a situation for herself. This means the opportunities for action (affordance) that are present in the game environment at a given moment. When action is intertwined with perception, the result is meaningful and the emotions are connected to perception-action. This way the instinctive, emotion-based decision making develops. Representative simulation of the game in training is a key factors in such implicit learning. The information, action and emotion from the observation are integrated during repetitions.
The theory is based on ecological psychology. Perception and action take place simultaneously in space and time, not sequentially. Perception is not just looking. It does not always happen consciously. Likewise, adaptation takes place in large part in the body and the subconscious (e.g. reflexes). Therefore, implicit learning in game situations is crucial. This differs essentially from the linear cognitivistic "perception, analysis, decision-making, excecution" view. Not every decision is conscious. We cannot stop and analyze the game while under time pressure. Locking up the technical solution in advance is also problematic. The opponent might step in in the middle of such decision making cycle. It is best to play “present in this moment" - using intuition and know-how to help when there’s no time for the conscious process.
Video.Movement helps observe things that would otherwise be missed.For example, a baseball catcher updates his running direction while catching a high ball. She does not run straight from the starting point to the ball landing position."We must perceive in order to move, but we must also move in order to perceive" -James J. Gibson
The collective coaching model is individualistic as well
Closed-skill technique drills do not encourage or foster creativity. If each individual is meant to repeat the same pattern multiple times, the intention is the opposite - making clones out of the individuals. In the current floorball culture (at least in Finland), there is a tendency to emphasize the importance of players' creativity by downplaying tactics. It is deemed tactics that kill creativity - but for some reason this is not the case for one-size-fits-all technical training. Model techniques are taught in detail by the coach but making decisions or adapting to situation are assumed to come from “mothers milk”. The players are expected to choose suitable technical action from a library in their memory. Either you have talent or not.
In a tactical sense, a lot of responsibility for decisions in game is shifted to the individual instead of the coach. In a team training like this, the tactical culture and nonverbal communication might be poor, but the players survive with individual skills and self-organization. Tactics are explained, sometimes drawn on the fly during a match. Individual mistakes and attitudes become the most common problem in functioning of such team. Some players will of course learn to execute the coaches tactics somehow even during a match - or adapt to such difficult situation with their individual skills. The rest are given pressure to find ways to survive. This often leads to more comparison of players and less of coaching each individual with good effort.
Collective coaching gives individuals room and appreciates diversity. It does not try to copy existing top players based on individual skills or properties. When the method of execution is not predetermined, an individual may use her creativity to reach a tactical task. Everybody does not have to do the same, but every player needs to align to the team values, cooperation and game model. In collective coaching, a player is free to make "well-intentioned mistakes" - to play brave and to take risks within the principles of the game model. Reacting to the mistakes as a team is achieved by practicing different moments of the game - transitions included in the training. This is how the collective tactics encourage the individual to play brave and try new or difficult things.
A collective’s coach will pick suitable players - not just the individuals with best physique or technique. It gives players the chance to succeed by diverse individual means. If the game model is flexible, not every player needs to be physically or technically peaked. They just need to learn to solve situations for the benefit of the team. A game model also helps team-building. Everyone is asked to play along common principles but not using the same technical-physical means.
This is also an important question of values in junior sports. Are we trying to find talent or develop it? Do we keep as many young players playing and participating as possible, or do we clean up the lesser material at an early age? Can we really predict by monitoring and testing individuals out of context to find out who will later become top players - in the context of the actual game? Is individual skill somehow different from the skill of playing the game floorball?
Tactical culture and communication via game interactions
In my last blog on the “A complex definition of technique” covered the skill of invasion team sports focusing on the individual perspective. The main message was, skill is not just technical but technical-tactical. This blog attempts to widen the perspective into the team context, where action becomes interaction and the relationships between teammates are honoured. The game is not about just individial skill and adaptation. Instead of just individuals learning to play, it is also the team as a social system that learns to coordinate and co-adapt their actions in the environment. An important point in this blog is that tactics should be seen as the whole tactical culture of a team. This culture is a language of game interactions. Tactics are ost just patterns that the coach has taught according to her playbook.
In the floorball language, the concept of tactics generally comprise of coach-led, consciously designed set-play patterns and defensive formations. The word has a negative and boring feeling associated to it because of how team play is often organized - especially in the lower leagues. The current practice in training is to organize only certain moments of the game deliberately. The defensive phases are relatively strictly organized and there might exist some set plays for the defensive zone build up play. The rest of the offensive moments are often unorganized. This is because the coaches do not have the knowledge on how to do it without “killing the creativity” and leaving options and the decision-making for the players.
Figure 1. When the game is running, one of the four moments is always happening. Understanding the game through this concept will help classify game events.
It is absurd to compare the culture of tactical coaching in a more developed invasion team sports such as basketball and soccer (in terms of offensive organization especially). In the top level teams, the offensive play is promptly organized with a huge amount of effort in these sports. Still it doesn’t seem to miss any “creativity”. The whole concept of creativity is a very problematic one in a team sport like floorball. Creativity does not stem from freedom, but constraints. It is supposed to produce something valuable for the team, not just express individual freedom as the end point.
Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom
-Michaelangelo
Tactics is how a team plays, not just the deliberately organized patterns
When a spectator watches a team playing without any knowledge of their training process, he might observe routines in their patterns of play. Some of them might be trained on purpose, but even if others are not deliberately coached, aren’t they just as much a part of the tactics of the team? If a team constantly plays a dysfunctional pattern in the offensive zone while attacking, isn’t it the job of the coach to try fix this and re-organize the offense?
Team tactics consist of all the concrete means used to gain (or lose) an objective in the game. These may be coach-led, player-led or tacitly self-organized patterns - or the lack of organization in specific moments repeatedly leading to a disadvantage. If it is the mission of the team to play as well as they can, they need a good tactical culture (whole way of playing) as well as skillful adaptive individuals. The coach needs to be critical and analyze the emerging patterns of play, not just what was taught actively. She should suit her game model for the current team - be the expert of the game and critically analyze what needs to be improved. Only organizing the traditional set plays and defensive formations is not a job well done, if there are challenges during the other game moments. The problem of dysfunctional playing patterns is not about the innate game intelligence of the players - rather the skills of the coach to improve and reorganize them.
Even the unconsciously (self-)organized patterns are part of the team tactics - the way of playing of that team manifests. Crucil weakness might lie in how the team self-organizes their playing in repeatedly emerging situations that are not in the existing playbook of the coach. The coach is also learning. She doesn’t just bring her playbook and set it up on a team after a meeting or a summer camp. A modern coach will want all the four moments of the game organized well, continuously improving the tactical culture and nonverbal as well as verbal communication of the team. She wants the team not only understand the tactics but also execute the principles with quality.
Team organization is qualitative and topological
Best teamwork is possible with an organized playing structure that is not rigid, but organic and flexible. It is about topology that creates options for the players. The structure is flexible. Such a complex game model will maintain the creative, intuitive and spontaneous action. The team is able adapt to the opponents actions and not force play or get lost. Also the individuals may play using their strengths for the best of the team.
📝 The next tactical evolution is on its way: positional fluidity. Develop players to take role that the game demands, and not by position. pic.twitter.com/0pSgMMbLPX
About the tweet: In soccer, positional play has gained a lot of attention recently. Traditionally the formations and positions are more static than in basketball. In floorball, it is much easier to organize fluid play than in soccer.
A clear but adaptive game model makes it easier for the players to recognize patterns and concepts and act accordingly. This yields unpredictability and collective intelligence. Organizing the team in a complex way creates a language for the team, by which the teammates may communicate to each other through game interactions. In the game, the players still get to make their own decisions according to the team tactical culture. This the best way in a constantly changing and random environment. The game is organized but fluid. It makes playing proactive and helps teammates to understand the intentions behind actions and anticipate the game. The opponent however is suprised, because they do not understand the nonverbal language of the opposing team.
Figure 2. Topology is the same, but the actual shape changes. Disclaimer: I do not mean that the structure should be the same always or that the players cannot switch roles. But there are topological patterns that emerge time and time again in the game - either deliberately or via self-organization. Analyzing these structures will help a coach understand and improve the team tactics.
Topology is branch of mathematical sciences that is concerned with the qualitative properties of objects and shapes that are invariant under certain kinds of transformations. Network topology is the arrangement of the various elements (links, nodes, players etc.) of a communication network.
In team sports, it is important to have good connections between the teammates. Instead of collecting statistics out of the individual actions (passes, shots, blocks, losses of possession etc), floorball coaches should focus a lot more on the topological structure of our team. This means watching the game and videos with a critical eye, searching and classifying patterns that need to be organized better or with different tactical principles.
A session of small sided games for teaching tactical game principles
Yesterday's blog post from Mikael de Anna (in finnish here) started a discourse on the actual practice design by coaches in different clubs. Here I will open up a very simple session from the SC Classic C1-juniors. We do most of our training by playing different game-based exercises that are built for learning the principles of play of our pretended way of playing.
These training games are meant to be played with high intensity to simulate a game of floorball. It is demanding physically, technically and engages the players emotionally (scoring and allowing goals). It also gives the opportunity to learn the know-how instead of know-what of the principles of play. The opponents will make the time and space limited and challenge the players somewhat as a match would. If we can express the desired way of playing fluently in these games, maybe some of it will transfer into a real game situation better than merely drawing and talking about the tactical decisions and training in isolation.
This kind of training makes it possible to simulate real game situations with a high frequency of the game situations we want to train. It is also repetition without repetition: the opponents are allowed to try their best to play against the other team. The desired situation will occur more frequently than in whole field 5vs5 play with stoppages and may be trained simultaneously on multiple zones on the training field. It preserves all the main moments of the game: offence, defence and the transitions. This is the core in our way of teaching players relationships in the game and perception-action. It is about learning “game intelligence” while training floorball fitness and technique in a real context.
Before the actual floorball training, we had a video meeting of the previous match and some warming up. On the training field, we usually have 2-5 minutes of free time for the players and after the training, 10-15 minutes of easy recovery activity, feedback, information about the next match and chilling together.
3v2 offensive zone play, corner/deep support. Both ends of the rink run same exercise. 2 x 6 shifts, 1 minute each.
This game situation might occur at least momentarily in a match: we have an overload on this part of field if the other defender is tied on the weak side and an forward is late from the situation or unable to drop below to defend one of our players
Starts with a pass to the wing, one player deep, close to the goal and one player in the centre
The ball carrier dribbles towards the goal/centre and attracts a defender
This player must continue the movement also after a pass to the corner support.
The player from the goal moves towards the corner to offer an easy passing option
Try to score and transition to defending the mini-goal (counterpressing) if the defending team gets the ball.
Starts with a new ball after a goal or if the ball goes off limits.
This principle of corner support is one of the important building blocks of our offensive zone play. Besides the positions and movements of the players in the exercise, the quality lies in manipulating the opposing defence. In order to build a good scoring change in this game situation, it is important to challenge the defenders with all the 3 attackers being continuously dangerous. A dribble may attract one defender to man-mark the ball carrier and after a pass to the corner, the new ball carrier might make a new quick dribble towards the goal, attracting also the second opponent to mark him. Either one of the dribbles is succesful or there is a free man in a scoring position if a pass may be completed. The players get to make their own creative actions to solve the problem according to these sub-principles:
When a ball carrier is pressured in the wing of the offensive zone, a corner support must be offered to him
After passing to the corner support, the player must move out of the way to make space for the deep support to move in to. He should try to dribble out of the corner and preferably towards the centre to present a threat to the defence, searching for a passing option to the centre or a new corner support if he is pressured.
This exercise could be expanded to run wider. Just add an offensive player to the weak side with the instruction to stay wide and be ready to score. A defender and a second mini-goal could be added to make it 4v3 to simulate the whole deep end of the offensive play. The mini-goals simulates a pass to the forwards for the red side, so they may also work on attacking againts a high pressing or a counterpressing opponent:
4v4+1 bottom support, 4 x 4 minutes
Effective and balanced offence has roles for each 5 players. In addition to the deep/corner support there should be options, so we also want the lowest player to offer a support below the wings when there is pressure. The supporting player must actively move to support the ball carrier close enough to the edges for a direct, clear passing lane.
For this (sub)principle, we built a game where there is a 4v4+1 running in each end of the rink. The space is limited with this many players in the deep zone, which forces the frequent use of the bottom support. This game was created by my assistant coach and brother Aleksi Hänninen.
In the game, the ball is allowed to travel as the green arrows show. The bottom support -player must move towards the edges to receive the pass down. The players are allowed to move on the whole half rink, so the defending team is allowed to press the bottom support and the offensive team may come down to offer support for him. This is a very simple game, where the play in the deeper end is a bit less organized. This makes the physical intensity high. We still wish to play according to our other principles also there, but it is not as directly controlled as the principle of the bottom support.
Start with one team attacking, the other defending. The attacking team has the yellow player on their side.
Ball may travel down and up the two zones according to the green arrows
Players may move freely, you could also allow the bottom support to move in the deeper offensive zone and make the player change roles with him that passed down
After receiving the pass, the bottom support should try to switch play or start moving towards the centre of the field while searching for an opportunity to get the ball back in by dribbling or passing.
There should be width in the positioning of the attacking team when the ball is played down to the yellow player
5v5
The rest of the session consist of simply playing 5 against 5. First we start playing and observe how well the previous principles work. Then maybe stop the play and remind the players about them. The very end of the session is play without stoppages to observe the learning effect in less organized setting.
The principles in action in some video clips from our matches this season:
I am also open for discourse with other coaches who are interested or have opinions on this type of coaching.
Glossary Nonlinear = The output of a nonlinear system cannot be simply predicted from the input. The function is not a line. Complex system = a system is complex, when it has emergent properties. This means, the whole is different from the sum of its parts. Living systems and organisms are complex. Complex systems cannot be explained solely by the parts, because the interactions between them are also essential. Complicated system = A complicated system is difficult to explain or understand, maybe due to the amount of the parts and interactions, but can be explained by researching just the parts. A sophisticated mechanical machine may be a complicated system. Invasion sport = a sport or game in which the teams try to invade each others territory in order to score points and try to distract the other team from doing so Co-adaptation = process by which two or more individuals undergo adaptation as a pair or group Reductionism = The philosophy that a system is understood simply by understanding the parts of it. Emergence = A system becomes more or different from the plain sum of its parts. A flock of birds or school of fish become stronger than the group of individuals randomly swimming in an area, when they move and act as a flock, swarm or school.
Skill is adaptation to an environment
A floorball player is a living human being and thus a nonlinear, complex system. A team playing floorball against another team is even more complex and nonlinear with a lot of meaningful interactions between the parts. In an invasion sport, the complexity is emphasized because the teams are trying to distract and disrupt the playing of each other - creating a more or less hostile environment. The skill of floorball is about interaction with and being able to adapt to this constantly changing hostile environment - not just as an individual but also as a collective.
Life is not linear, it is organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they helped to create for us.
- Sir Ken Robinson
The learning process in these sports is nonlinear. It is impossible for the coach to control the learning and adaptation of the players by breaking the skill into parts or properties and improving them one at a time. This kind of reductionist training does not directly improve the skill in an invasion sport, because the team or player is not co-adapting or self-organising against anything while training - unless they immerse themselves deeply into some imagined game situation.
Figure 1. Life & reality is not linear
Improving the skill of floorball is about learning to become better at playing the game. That includes the functional technical ability, the psychological skill aspect and also the specific physical fitness of playing well the whole match. The game is not simply about comparing who is faster, stronger or more technical. We cannot assume a direct, linear transfer of training a single property or technique into complex game situations. Playing well is about quality and interaction, not about any set of quantities that may be measured out of context. In this blog text, a new definition for “technique” is explained in order to better understand our sport through this lens of complexity.
The current, mechanistic training paradigm
A large part of the training in floorball today is about improving parts of floorball skill out of context. Properties of individual players are trained one at a time, often one individual at a time. Transfer of speed, endurance, strength or technical model repetitions training into the complex game is taken for granted. Especially during the off-season, a lot of training targets the physical properties of the player isolated from the game environment. Even inside the floorball rink, the chaos and randomness of a real game situation is often erased “to get a lot of clean repetitions”. It is assumed that the game is a complicated system instead of a complex one.
The coaches try to control the training stimuli, maximizing the development of a single property at each session. Each player is assumed to adapt manner to this stimulus in a similar way. Everything is about developing the different properties, parts of the whole. The background for this system lies in soviet sports science of periodization, where the training stress is varied based on physiology only. This kind of reductionism ignores the interactions between the parts of a system. In a real game situation, the properties or structures of a player interact with each other, thus the quantities are not the solution. Something more than the sum of parts emerge from the interactions, just as it happens in a team of players interacting with each other.
What does the science really say about human movement and actions?
The science of motor learning and coordination has shown the previous is not the optimum way to learn motor skill. It is a different skill to be able to adapt to game situations than being able to produce clean techniques on an empty field, unlimited time and space. In a team sport, trainining techniques should be replaced with action and maybe more exactly - interaction. Optimal model techniques do not exist in the context of this kind of team sport.
Actually even a very closed skill such as rifle shooting or hitting a coin or a target with a hammer is not about repeating an identical motor pattern over and over. It was proven in a classic study by Nikolai Bernstein who is one of the pioneers in of motor learning and coordination sciences already in the 30’s. This does not mean that all drills or individual technique training are bad for the players. There is also variability in a drill, just less than when playing against opponents. Training drills transfers in a different way than the coaches think and are not the optimal method in a team training when you have opponents available. Movement is always about adapting to a situation. There’s always variability in the movement pattern even in closed skill events. Even more so in an invasion sport.
It is generally assumed that doing a lot of isolated repetitions would bring more order and stability to the performance of an individual. But it is the end result we want to stabilize, not the technique used. Variability is fundamental for adapting to changing situations. In invasion sports this is highlighted, but a living human is always in the process of change. Every situation we are in, is different. The repetition of any action is never exactly the same. We must be very adaptable to produce stable outcomes. This principle is called repetition without repetition. To understand human motor learning is essential in order to truly understand team sport skills and coaching.
Figure 2. Even for professional blacksmiths with years of training, there are no similar repetitions or a single technique to hit the coin. The blacksmiths that were less accurate, had more constant movement pattern and the more accurate hammer users showed more variability in their motor patterns.
The human, the brain and the motor system are adaptable and creative. They will try to find a solution that is adapted to any new problem on hand. The brain does not store complete movement techniques or other prefabricated solutions. It adapts. Memory works the same way - it is a process and it needs a context:
For multiple reasons, the over-analytical way of training and testing isolated properties are currently the dominant fashion. Reductionist way of thinking has given the humanity a lot of improvement and innovations in science, especially in the industrial domain. However, new and more holistic thinking is soon needed if we want to solve the current ecological and social problems. The status of scientific method as pure truth and especially reductionist science are challenged and questioned even outside of the sporting world. The subjective perceptions, social and environmental values must be acknowledged and appreciated. The complexity paradigm is gaining ground on different domains.
Short introduction to Nonlinear pedagogy & the Constraints Led Approach
Human beings in a complex game demand a nonlinear framework for coaching and training. Such frameworks are nonlinear pedagogy and constraints led approach (constraints based learning). In the constraints led approach and nonlinear pedagogy, the performance emerges as the interaction of three constraints: the task (objective), the environment and the organism. The organismic constraints mean the properties of the organism that limit which solutions are possible for the organism (an individual or a team).
The learner/performer exists in an environment, where he/she searches and finds solutions for the situation to complete the given task. Within these constraints, solutions can emerge creatively in the situation. This is also called self-organization. The learner has the freedom to develop any individual technical-physical solution that produces the desired outcome inside the constraints.
Figure 3. The image represents the basic theory of constraints based learning: the organism is put in an environment with a task to achieve. These three constraints create a “triangle” of constraints. Performance or movement emerges from these constraints as the organism perceives and acts according to the situation that is updated also during the action itself.
Skill is about perception-action
There is no perception and action, only perception-action and this happen “online” as a continuous cycle. It is constant adaptation to the situation and could be understood by “being in the present” or a kind of mindful playing. It is not a sequence of perception, analysis, decision and execution. The performer adapts into the situation “online”, solving the given motor problem by adjusting the movements in real time while executing the action. In a pressure situation, there is no time for analysis and decision making. Large part of the perception-action happens subconsciously. A movement pattern cannot be selected from any "library" and ran through after the decision is made.
Skillfully dodging the opponents while dribbling through a gap in defence into an open space is an example of perception-action. In such cases the player cannot just “run” a pre-planned movement pattern that he/she goes through, but must be present in the moment and adapt to the opponents actions. This cannot be learned in isolation - but only playing against opponents. It is the skill of percepting-acting in the specific sporting environment and real game situations.
Video: Perception-Action in a floorball match. You cannot just execute techniques, you need to perceive the environment around you and adapt to it with technical skill structure. This is about interaction and cannot be learnt by dribbling cones.
So to play better - you need to play. Training should not fragment the game into separate technical or physical components. The coach does not need to know which properties of the player are developed during the current session. Instead, he helps to create a learning environment and lets the players find and improve their solutions individually. The players get opportunities to adapt in a game environment. Some find the solutions more based on physicality, some technical skill and some by using tactical intelligence and for example deceiving the opponents. Instead of every player performing the same techniques, the actions may vary. Everyone has the opportunity to develop and use his or her own strengths.
We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”
― Ken Robinson
Redefinition of technique
In a sport such as floorball is, the outcome of an action is what matters - points are not awarded for using model techniques. The actual technique is of no interest if it yields the desired tactical outcome. It doesn’t matter how you shoot the ball if it ends up in the opposing goal, or how you pass if the teammate receives the pass into a good position and situation.
Technique in floorball and other team sports is to be understood as the functional ability to adapt to the situations and generate action. This demands training the perception-action of the players in the game and team context. The ability to produce any number of out-of-context clean model techniques is not the same thing. Technique in floorball is a qualitative structure of technical ability rather than a quantitative amount of individual technique.
Figure 4 On the left, a person has a dense structure of connections in the brain and may adapt to specific situations with multiple solutions. On the right instead, only a few routes are available. In a video lecture, Sami Kalaja is speaking about a similar situation in controlling the calf muscles and comparing a figure skater and an endurance runner. Both have trained a lot, but the former with much greater variability.
Everybody agrees that technique is important in floorball, but if our concept of technique means the skill on an empty field, it simply does not represent the game. We need to examine what is important in order to effectively solve sport-specific motor problems in a game environment. Defining technical skill as a qualitative structure instead of quantitative amount recognizes the true nature of the sport performance. It is adaptability that should be coached instead of any number of model techniques. The players should be given the freedom to creatively use their individual talents and find their own solutions and strengths. Training may be supplemented with individual training on the players free time, but in a team session it is a waste of resources to train technique in isolation. We have limited time to gather the team together and coach perception-action in real game situations. The team and groups inside it need to train co-adaptation as a collective (a topic for a new blog). These skills of co-adaptation and perception-action are essential for the players to become skillful instead of just technical.
Someone who has juggled the ball in the air during a game, after which four defenders of the opponent get the time to run back, that’s the player people think is great. I say he has to go to a circus.
Technique is not being able to juggle a ball 1000 times. Anyone can do that by practicing. Then you can work in the circus. Technique is passing the ball with one touch, with the right speed, at the right foot of your team mate.
- Johan Cruyff
There are a lot of good texts available on the internet on these topics. Here’s a couple of links into suggested reading:
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