"Constraints Based Coaching" is fast becoming the new unopposed practice

The War on Drills

Unopposed practice, commonly referred to as ‘drills’, have long since been denounced in coaching circles. Their lack of variability and representativeness is said to give them quite low transferability to performance. The ‘pro drill’ camp argues that this method of training at least provides a huge amount of repetitions of a certain action, which means the players are more likely to perform them better in the game. Unfortunately for them, we know that this repetition has little benefit. In fact, we know that it can actually create players who are robotic in their actions, players who only develop one specific, rigid way of solving problems. It teaches players that a single blueprint technique exists, and it is the golden ticket to solving their sport. Unopposed practice does not equip players with the necessary skills to solve complex and novel performance situations under significant time pressures.

We also know that true technique is about performing a slightly novel actions each time it is performed, to satisfy the exact specification of the situation the performer finds themselves in. In simple football terms, this means that carrying the ball in football is always slightly different from situation to situation. Let’s take Lionel Messi, perhaps the greatest footballer to ever live. He is at absolute expert level when it comes to carrying the ball. But he won’t ever have faced the same situation twice in his career. Each moment he has taken a dribble with the ball has been slightly different. Whether it’s the location of the field he finds himself in, the location of opponents, the number of opponents, the speed of the ball, the direction of the ball, the trajectory of the ball, the location of teammates, the number of teammates, the opponent themselves and their strengths/weaknesses. True technique (in this case, carrying the ball) is stable but flexible, it is able to be adjusted slightly to solve any given situation that Messi finds himself in.

The Constraints Lead Approach

The Constraints Lead Approach has recently become a popular phrase for coaches. It is a methodology which is underpinned by a view of learning as being nonlinear. This approach is concerned with trying to understand the varying constraints which interact and result in sporting performance. It is a total examination of an individual and how they interact with their environment and the task at hand. After going through this process, we can hopefully better create exercises which really accelerate learning because we know which constraints are most relevant to that individuals’ (in)ability to solve a certain situation. But what has happened instead, in my experience, is that coaches have taken the CLA and started to mindlessly list task constraints and manipulate them in practice, hoping that it will lead to learning.

Example 1: The coach decides that their midfielder is too slow on the ball, often taking too much time before making a decision on what to do. The coach decides to use a ‘constraint’ in training. This ‘constraint’ is that the player must always play with one touch when they play. The coach hopes that this ‘constraint’ will help the player to make quicker decisions and execute decisions quicker.

Example 2: The coach decides that the team is not good enough in the established attacking phase. The coach thinks that the players don’t quite understand how to progress the ball through the thirds, especially in the midfield areas. Therefore, the team don’t get to progress the ball up the field as often as they would like. The coach decides to use a ‘constraint’ in training. This ‘constraint’ is that for a team to score a goal, they must use an ‘up, back and through’ combination. The coach hopes that this rule will mean the players look to combine more in midfield, before going forwards.

Example 3: The coach decides that the winger is not good enough to beat the opponent in a 1v1 situation. The coach decides to use a ‘constraint’ in training. This ‘constraint’ is that the player is told to try and beat the opponent with a 1v1 every time they have the ball. The coach hopes that this instruction will guide the player into more 1v1 situations, so the player gets more repetitions of this and ultimately improves in these situations.

These are very common stories for coaches, very common problems their players face and very common solutions that coaches use. However, there is a big issue here, with all three examples.

Example 1: This rule enforced on the player could create poor performance behaviours. Such a large amount of options available to them has been taken away, that they are now only seeking 1 touch pass opportunities. They are not looking for moments to outplay upon receive, to receive between the lines on the half turn, to take a first touch to draw pressure before releasing. They are only seeking 1 touch pass opportunities. And they may find a lot of those opportunities, so it can appear that the session is ‘working’ and learning is happening. But it is highly likely (in fact, almost certain) that a one touch pass is not the optimal solution in all the situations they have received the ball in. Therefore, the player will be carrying out less optimal actions.

Example 2: I have seen this so many times and there are so many things wrong. Firstly, the initial passer may start to prioritise a player wrong turned, even if there are 3 players right turned at the same time. Secondly, the wrong turned player dropping the ball backwards is not going to be ever looking to become right turned themselves, only to prove the backwards pass. Thirdly, the opposition defending team actually knows what is trying to be achieved. So they can just lure in the pass to the wrong turned player and anticipate the next, backwards pass.

Example 3: I have been guilty of this one myself recently. And what I have found is that the player in question has begun to totally disregard other key information on the field and has just given all of her focus towards the direct opponent. Inevitably, this has led to situations where she could have played a pass in behind to an onrushing striker to create a 1v1 opportunity, but she has instead chosen to priorities the 1v1 situation. This player has become extremely unaware of 2nd and 3rd defender behaviours, which are extremely important when it comes to attacking!

In these examples, the players are being forced (to different extents) into certain behaviours. They are being forced to constantly play on one touch, to look for wrong turned players (to create up, back and through moments) and to constantly go 1v1 when in possession of the ball. It could be argued that these examples are necessary for the players to experience those situations and gain success, but these are the arguments which the ‘pro drill’ camp use to justify why unopposed practice holds serious weight in the learning process. However, I fully understand that these coaching practices have really good intentions behind them. After all, these examples are at least being used in settings where variability and representative design are much higher than typical unopposed practice. But I fear that these examples do the opposite of what coaches are using them for. They don’t help players to develop certain aspects of their game, they hinder them. They don’t foster creativity, they prevent it. They don’t help players learn how to solve certain situations, they make failure more likely.

Coaching in 2024

I think the worst pandemic in coaching right now is the amount of coaches we see who are so prepared to say why they think something is wrong, but unable to articulate what is actually correct. Coaches who are so quick (usually, without fully understanding the whole situation) to point out why x is bad and never works, but fail to provide any other possible solutions themselves. I do not want to fall in that trap! The trap of moaning about everything that is going wrong but not providing solutions on how I think it can be improved. Therefore, below I am going to re-visit example 1 and provide an alternative view, still using the CLA as a thinking tool. The main principle around each solution will be ‘Constrain to Afford’. Firstly, the coach should ensure that they have thought about each performance problem enough. Why exactly is the midfielder in Example 1 too slow at making decisions? This is where the CLA must be understood in its entirety and this is by no means an easy job. What are the factors within Task, Environment and Individual which are ‘constraining’ performance? And which of them are we going to manipulate in order to facilitate learning?

Let’s take a look at Example 1 in more detail. What could be the constraints that sit within Task, Environment and Individual on this example? It is important to note that a constraint is only something which shapes behaviour. And these things are different from person to person. This is the art of coaching, of professional judgement and consequent decision making. A made up example is below. This is an extremely simplified example, but an example nonetheless.

In the example I gave before, the coach has instantly jumped towards an Individual Constraint, that of ‘Technical Toolbox’. But in truth it could be any number of constraints, or indeed interaction of constraints, which is causing his performance. In youth football, taking too long on the ball is a common problem and the solutions often lay in the work the players do before they receive. If this isn’t good enough, they naturally take longer on the ball. Improving scanning knowledge/habits, positioning and body position upon receive, can all have huge impacts on a players ability to play quicker. It could also be that a player’s belief in their own ability to play with less touches is extremely low. Using psychological tools, this can be developed. Of course, it could also be that the players Technical Toolbox is too limited. The player does not have the capabilities to play with a one touch pass, they are not capable of receiving to be right turned using only one touch. Naturally then, they need to take more touches and consequently, more time. Assuming this IS the case, let’s take a look at what could be a useful way to develop this.

This is where ‘constrain to afford’ comes in. The below example shows a simple 3v3+3 practice. The game is played for 90 seconds and to win, one team must reach 10 successful switches of play. If no team reaches 10, nobody wins. We are constraining the space and therefore, the time that the player has available. We are really working towards expanding the technical toolbox here. It is an opportunity in this practice for us to start to link different constraints together. So which receiving technique we might look to use when we have teammates in this position, or when we have opponents in this position, or when the ball is travelling in this way, for example. And we are doing all this without the need for rules that enforce behaviour. We instead, have constrained to afford behaviour, not constrained to force behaviour. It won’t be the case that the player gets one situation over and over again here. They won’t get the consistent and predictable repetition I mentioned earlier. They are experiencing ‘repetition without repetition’. They are less likely to become robotic and are more likely to be better at solving complex performance situations under time pressures.

To afford an even more specific situation for our player in question, we could even instruct one player on the opposition team to man-mark our player very aggressively for one round. It can be very useful to then reflect with that player after, asking questions like, ‘How was the pressure on you in that round?’ & ‘What did you have the opportunity to do?’. Of course in this particular example, our player will be afforded more one touch actions & more outplaying under pressure actions. If this is what we want to target for our player, this could be appropriate. Similarly, if we wanted to target the players’ toolbox of receiving to immediately play forwards, we could ask the defenders to stay away from our player for one round. And go through the same reflection process with them. This gives us a good opportunity to draw players’ attention towards certain situations and begin to couple them with appropriate solutions. It is a good idea to not give the opposition players the same tasks for two rounds in a row, so the player in question keeps being challenged in random and unpredictable ways, thus continually achieving ‘repetition without repetition’.

It is my belief that this method of using a CLA to understand performance and accelerate development will be much more fruitful in the long run. This is because it is more specific and appropriate to each player. It is working on EXACTLY what is relevant for them, after a long and deliberate process of trying to understand all that ‘constrains’ their performance.

A final thought

What is a constraint? Now, that is a totally new conversation. Even the word constraint is problematic because in some ways it assumes that it has a negative impact on performance. When actually, a constraint could have a positive impact on performance. For example, a parent watching a child play football is an Environmental Constraint. But it could be that the child gets a great sense of motivation from their parent being there and therefore it has a positive effect on performance. Furthermore, it may be that the child doesn’t care at all whether or not their parents are there and therefore it has no impact on performance. It does not ‘constrain’ performance. Knowing that, is it even a constraint anymore? Or is it just an environmental factor?