Applying science of 'ecological dynamics'

After two serious injuries in consecutive seasons, non-League player Ben Franks turned to another area of the game he had always been interested in – coaching.

He chose university as the route of entry, doing an undergraduate degree in sport, coaching and physical education, a Masters by research in sport and health sciences, and is now studying for a PhD in perceptual-motor learning.

He is also a coach developer at Boing Kids, a lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, and was recently announced as a first-team coach at Ebbsfleet United Women.

A key element of Ben’s research is ecological dynamics. SCW caught up with him to find out what that is in the context of soccer and how it helps in session design…

SCW: Can you explain what ecological dynamics means?

BF: “Roughly, it is a theoretical framework which explains motor behaviour and skill adaptability.

"It’s a nice way to explain why skilled performers behave the way they do, and how we can then enhance the learning process that underpins that.

"Traditionally, we’ve viewed skill learning in the old school ways, of schema theory and representations and mental models. 

"Ecological dynamics is bit more interaction-focused. It views the organism - the human - and their environment as being mutually coupled.

"Rather than being some kind of predicting machine, we are in tune with what happens around us and we act and exist by staying in touch with the information that surrounds us. It is founded on this direct perception thing.

"What we perceive visually, we are sensitive to - so we don’t need to take and store pictures, like some kind of memory bank, in our brain.

"Our perceptual systems - our brain, eyes and body - is coupled to certain parts of that information field that we can see. And that’s then how we act."

SCW: What are some useful things for coaches to know about the approach that could be helpful to them in their practice??

BF: "Ecological dynamics makes sense to me because we exist in real time in that environment. So we need to make sure that in training design, we represent - or design in - the right kinds of information that they’re going to see and use in a performance environment.

"Ecological dynamics views the human and their environment as mutually coupled..."

“If we’re teaching a novice how to dribble and we put cones on the floor, the information is the cones. They’re going to look for the cones to go around.

"But one of our biggest coaching points when teaching someone how to dribble is to keep your head up. We’ve just completely eradicated that by placing cones on the floor.

"You see coaches saying ’Look up, look up’. But the way we’ve shaped that environment is presenting the wrong kind of information. 

“So trying to represent things that are relevant and actually exist is most important. That doesn’t have to look like an 11v11 game all the time - we can strip it back to the things that are most relevant.

"When I was a goalkeeper coach, we used to use a lot of coloured tape on different areas of the body or on the ball, to help them pick up certain kinds of information.

"So say our theme that week was working on shots from the angle and trying to pick up the trajectory of the ball - if it was spinning or dipping, we’d put luminous colour tape on the ball to help the youth goalkeepers pick up the trajectory of the ball, how it is spinning and moving. 

“It’s just about trying to present things that are going to transfer across domains, presenting information which is most relevant that’s going to underpin and support their performance.

"I think too many times we overly or artificially constrain things too frequently. We lose some of the nuance of practice, and that’s how we’re going to get transfer.

"If we start to learn the dynamics of what’s actually going to happen in the performance, we have to in some way start to design that into our training designs.”