Tuning in the play

Playing a game where it is not lived as the main sport culture obliges to look at its practice according to its very own reality. When the play rolls differently compared to renown nations for this sport (e.g., football, soccer), coaches involved locally could look into the experience that is lived, and that includes the context and culture around the sport – regardless of how it is lived elsewhere.

At a certain extent, the characteristics of the lived experience reveals the reasons why it is practiced and organized the way it is.

The way the game is practiced precisely reflects the key, difficult footsteps of what it is to learn to play the game.

We continuously hear about the lack of time of [deliberate] practice compared to Brazilians (Salmela, Marques, & Machado, 2003). We sometimes hear about the more traditional approaches to developing abilities compared to the dynamic exercises observed in top European clubs (Roca & Ford, 2020).

And, we have been drilled to look at what results from the play more than anything else. We barely investigate the lived experience of playing. And that is not because the community of practice will not talk about it.

The good thing is it’s all observable… if we direct our attention to the hints that can make a difference.

The lived experience spans way more than unsatisfaction when young competitors miss or nice combinations. To seize the nature of the lived of the play, we could look at the possibilities that the game provides, or better, the opportunities that the play doesn’t give to the players who need them most.

The feeling of playing the game you are not fit for really affects the overall lived experience of playing and the motivation to return every week. In such case, positive mindset lessons may help but only to a certain extent. The proposed activities, however, if adequately designed, can trigger actions that will serve the play… and the players.

You’ve probably once come across Paul Amaro’s quote saying that if your flower doesn’t grow, you shouldn’t try to correct the flower itself but the environment it lives in. That is exactly the point for the players, and a massive portion of the actions we expect them to perform.

In sum, the reality of play defines the lived experience. It defines the way participants make decisions (Petiot, Bagatin, Aquino, & Raab, 2021b), the actions they can afford or not (Petiot, Aquino, Silva, Barreira, & Raab, 2021a) and what becomes significant to them, individually (Petiot, Bagatin, & Mouchet, 2022).

The quality of their experience will then depend on more than the coach’s intervention but on a tuning between the situation that is offered to them and their capabilities (Petiot et al., 2021a). Similarly, the version of the play that will resemble to the play coaches have in their mind would only occur for real once there is, again, a tuning between the mindset of the players and the adversity they will face.

The “lived” experience of the play

In the current case, we do refer to the specific practice of the play that is undergoing. We are looking at the type of play that the participants take part into and that leaves an impression on them. That’s what they take home. That is what they build onto and makes them want more, or not.

To read better the “lived experience” of players in an activity, we can look at the way they decide in the play.

Let’s keep in mind what it is like to make decisions in the environment of play. Now is the moment we have to leave our own reading of the game aside and “feel” the game from within, as opposed to what we see from the sidelines or on TV.

In an environment where you are required to decide with movements and skills, in a fraction of a second, for immediate and emotional reactions, and even in sync with your teammates: how would you now describe your ability to make sound decisions?

It has been described as essentially embedded in the act of play. That means decisions are not tasks “inserted” in series actions to execute when you play; it’s inherently part of it. It initially portrays more of a reaction until there is a practical purpose given to the decision.

And that purpose isn’t even palpable.

To picture how implicit decisions are, we can look at cognitive and neurosciences.

Advances in sciences helped describe decisions as:

• generated, as opposed to “picked amongst alternatives” (Johnson & Raab, 2003);
• frugal, meaning they are based on a few simple heuristics (Raab, 2012);
• pre-reflected, as opposed to be fully weighed through fors and cons (Vermersch, 2000).

With such a short moment to decide wisely, there can’t possibly be too much info going through.

In short, less is more.

To wrap it up, the information that is utilized is evaluated (Petiot, Aquino, Cardoso, Santos, & Teoldo, 2017). That means, the information that serves the decision is processed so that players judge it in the timeframe he/she affords. The better the player judges what he sees or feels within a same time window, better the decisions that player can make.

Playing therefore implies having an act that makes sense on the moment, and fast. If playing means processing less loads of information and processing it better, players need to develop the corresponding cognitive skills. And that will happen if they are as close to playing.

All. The. Time.

To learn to play takes time, especially if you are given less than half the opportunities and/or conditions to train exactly that, compared to nations where players train on a daily basis.

More specifically, learning will happen if players play games that give them the opportunities to.

This implies coaches should design the games accordingly, beforehand. This can help everybody focus on shaping the environment in which actions are executed as opposed on exclusively looking at every actions.

If playing means a service that provides players with tailored opportunities to feel a positive experience and progress, it implies that the play must tune in the expected or desired experience. On the other hand, players should have an equal responsibility towards the play, that is to tune their mind to the reality of the play.

A “tuned” mind-set for playing

In tailored games for development, players afford to execute more and more advanced actions. They therefore progress within the act of playing, looking every time to succeed some more contextualized and purposeful actions.

Players will inevitably solicit key cognitive mechanisms that “tune” with the act of playing. But that in itself isn’t enough to lead to performance.

We know the song: one needs more than skills to make it to higher performance.

Concretely, it’s not only about toughing it and working more; it’s also about tuning to that ever-changing nature of the game.

What does that mean for the player’s progression if the environment never stops to change? It means players also need to tune their mindset for variability in the game added with difficulty, adversity, and competition.

Difficulty, adversity, and competition repeatedly raise some important challenges such as anxiety of performance.

Stepping up to a more competitive level may reflect following the friends one has played until then… but it may also hold players back from experimenting what they knew they could do before. This could be observed in:

• not wanting to make mistakes or being responsible for losing the ball;
• not taking chances or playing safe all the time;
• not trying again after failure.

Hence, above all key cognitive skills, tuning the mind-set to respond to difficulty, adversity, and competition in the game are paramount to performance. To make sense in and for the play, however, it is important to define the mind-set qualities we want players to develop in the specific context of play. Amongst these qualities:

Resilience - which is to not hold back from trying again, especially something new

This is often the case for playmakers or strikers where they have to keep trying. The context of play serves to develop this mind-set as long as it provides a balanced level of difficulty and adversity. As a starter, we can picture simple games based on direct oppositions such as 2v2s and 3v3s: there are less opportunities in the play and players must keep trying. Less complex games (i.e., with less players) would offer more repetitions and less waiting before to try again.

Confidence in one’s own capabilities and decisions - stay in a mental zone where you know “that you decide what you can do, and that you can do what you decide”.

Picture a player who starts a game with simple actions and progresses to more advanced actions as the game goes on versus a player who would miss half of his/her actions from the moment he/she steps in the game. The players are probably not betting on the same cycle of inner thoughts even though both will be influenced by the course of their actions. During the development phase, investing on successes should keep the player off “too much doubt” and requisitioning him/herself to the point thoughts hold back from performing at the pace of the game. That will occur mostly in competitive the games of any level of complexity, difficulty, adversity, so any played form of exercise is an appropriate context to instill confidence.

Taking risks - trying actions that make a difference even if they are not “safe” (i.e., to keep ball possession)

This comes with creating the right conditions to oneself so that the most effort in an action is invested in making the difference. For instance, players benefit in making sure more of the little details are covered before receiving the ball (e.g.: general balance, opened body, scan over shoulders, readiness to move). It’s still important to set objectives so that ambition does not overflow and lead to inefficient outcome. The performer should remain positively demanding in his/her initiative. Acknowledging that there is no one single response, way or recipe is a starting point; one must try and adjust to properly learn how to take the right risks. Games with scenarios and consequences are a great stimulus for taking risks as they offer the opportunities to want more outcome from an opportunity to perform.

As a conclusion, tuning is a responsibility for both the coaching staff and the players. Everyone can take the necessary measures to make the “lived experience” of the play as likeable for the participants as efficient for the team. It’s mainly a matter of investment in the conditions beforehand: shaping the play and forging a mindset. Together, these two dimensions of conditions for playing well can make a difference in how significant it is for the players to play, in a custom or local environment and culture.

References

Johnson, J. G., & Raab, M. (2003). Take the first: Option-generation and resulting choices. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 91(2), 215-229.

Petiot, G., Aquino, R., Silva, D. C. d., Barreira, D. V., & Raab, M. (2021a). Contrasting learning psychology theories applied to the teaching-learning-training process of tactics in soccer. Frontiers in psychology.

Petiot, G. H., Aquino, R., Cardoso, F., Santos, R., & Teoldo, I. (2017). What mental process favours quality decision-making in young soccer players? Motriz: Revista de Educa??o Física, 23(3).

Petiot, G. H., Bagatin, R., Aquino, R., & Raab, M. (2021b). Key characteristics of decision making in soccer and their implications. New Ideas in Psychology, 61, 100846.

Petiot, G. H., Bagatin, R., & Mouchet, A. (2022). Describing the tactical knowledge used by young competitive soccer players: A psychophenomenological analysis. Human Movement, 23(4).

Raab, M. (2012). Simple heuristics in sports. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 5(2), 104-120.

Roca, A., & Ford, P. R. (2020). Decision-making practice during coaching sessions in elite youth football across European countries. Science and Medicine in Football, 4(4), 263-268.

Salmela, J. H., Marques, M. P., & Machado, R. (2003). The informal structure of football in Brasil. FA Coaches Ass J, 1, 17-19.

Vermersch, P. (2000). Conscience directe et conscience réfléchie. Intellectica, 31(2), 269-311.