Redefine Coaching & Athlete Development in Sports (eBook)

Chapter 2

The Science of Learning

Errors are the basis for neural plasticity and for learning –Dr Andrew Huberman

An important starting point for this chapter is to outline how learning takes place in the nervous system (comprised of the brain and the spinal cord), so that practitioners, athletes, and parents have a better understanding of the process. The nervous system is the centre of life’s experiences, and is responsible for everything we know, behaviours, emotions, and how we feel. Neuroplasticity or brain plasticity can be defined as the ability of the nervous system to change its activity in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganising its structure, functions, or connections. Simply put, this is how learning takes place. To achieve plasticity, signals need to be sent to the brain that something is wrong, so making mistakes or errors are essential ingredients when it comes to learning anything.

The signal of plasticity is implemented by the making of errors, many times over. It’s the reaches and failures that signals to the nervous system that something is not working, therefore the shifts start to take place. During the early stages of learning ‘anything’, the frustrations we feel are actually the best thing for plasticity as it is sending signals to the nervous system saying something is wrong, can you do something to help. The brain doesn’t understand the emotion of frustration, but it completely understands the chemicals that are being released, namely adrenaline (increases alertness) and acetylcholine (increases focus), and these are the chemical signals that open up plasticity. Dopamine is another important plasticity chemical, and this is released when we start to achieve a little success. It’s like a celebratory chemical or motivational molecule.

Error feedback is an essential component of neural plasticity and learning as it releases the key chemicals of plasticity. With regard to a young athlete, helping them to understand the error in as many ways as possible, such as showing them video clips, using Q&A sessions, etc. is an important process, so that they have maximum opportunity to implement neural plasticity and learning. The most important issue within this process is ensuring that every athlete understands the science behind how you learn (as outlined later in this chapter), why errors are an essential ingredient, and that they are put in situations many times over where they have to solve problems, and, because of this make a high number of errors. Making athletes comfortable with making errors is key if they are to maximise their learning and development potential. Actually, it goes beyond being comfortable. It’s getting athletes to seek out scenarios where they are uncomfortable and know that errors will be made that is the answer to learning. Athletes then will keep moving forward, embracing errors, which in turn, will ensure plasticity takes place continually. (Note: blocked practice keeps athletes in a ‘safe haven’, away from errors, and therefore the opportunities for plasticity are minimised. Variable practice immerses athletes in game-specific scenarios that bring with it all the unpredictability of the actual game. This is where athletes learn best; being faced with never-seen-before scenarios, asked to problem solve, and making lots of errors whilst trying to find the right answers.)

Very few individuals in the sports world are knowledgeable about how learning really works and, therefore, their training programmes are not nearly as effective as they could be. Leveraging decades of research on the science of learning, we incorporate fundamental, evidence-based learning principles into the Framework to Freedom (see part 2), which leads our coaches and players to train more effectively and efficiently. This is a short introduction from Saskia Giebl who is a PhD researcher at the world-leading Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab at the University of California and Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr Robert Bjork and his team research how humans learn best and, over many decades of research, they have created a few methods proven by science to work exceptionally well. Take a look at some of the following details and how I have been using them in my practices over the past decade:

Spacing

The spacing effect refers to finding that information that is repeatedly presented over spaced intervals is learned much better than information that is repeated without intervals (i.e. massed presentation). In conjunction with interleaving, we use spacing as follows: 12 minutes practice/play + 3 minutes break. This 15-minute block allows plenty of ball rolling time, plus time for players to have a drink, talk with friends, plan for what’s coming next (forecasting), which all aids brain stimulation and recalibrates the concentration span.

Interleaving

An effective learning strategy is to interleave one’s study, i.e. study a little bit of history, then a little bit of psychology, followed by a chapter of statistics, and go back again to history. Following this method, we coach players in the same way; play – 1 v 1s – 2 v 2s – themed games – scenarios. This variable way of learning is a long-term process that works in conjunction with each player’s Individual Learning Plan (more about ILPs later).

Desirable Difficulties

Our system of learning interleaves many different types of problems during every training session (1 v 1s/1 v 2s/themed games/game scenarios). Recent research reveals that difficult training of this type produces higher scores on tests compared with blocked practice (Rohrer & Taylor, 2007), and this is the kind of training that the Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab believes enhances long-term learning.

In the paper, ‘Learning Versus Performance: An Integrative Review’, Soderstrom & Bjork (2015) point out very clearly that performance, certainly in the short term is no real indicator of learning:

The primary goal of instruction should be to facilitate long-term learning—that is, to create relatively permanent changes in comprehension, understanding, and skills of the types that will support long-term retention and transfer. During the instruction or training process, however, what we can observe, and measure is performance, which is often an unreliable index of whether the relatively long-term changes that constitute learning have taken place. The time-honoured distinction between learning and performance dates back decades, spurred by early animal and motor-skills research that revealed that learning can occur even when no discernible changes in performance are observed. More recently, the converse has also been shown—specifically, that improvements in performance can fail to yield significant learning—and, in fact, that certain manipulations can have opposite effects on learning and performance.

This is exactly why I take a long-term view of development and use the variable, game-based model that does not hinge on immediate success, and if anything, looks messy and un-coordinated due to the randomness of the practices and games. This does not sate the need in modern society for instant gratification, but the science undeniably states that it is the correct approach to take when trying to develop or master something over the long term. I suppose it is getting parents used to the idea that the apple of their eye is not akin to Lionel Messi the instant he or she walks onto the field for the first time.

Variable/Game-Specific Practice

Scientists (e.g. Williams & Hodges, 2005) have highlighted the advantage of using practice activities that are highly relevant to performance as they recreate the perceptual, cognitive, and motor demands evident during competition, coupled with a less prescriptive approach to instruction. To this end, small-sided and conditioned games in all their various formats (e.g. 2 vs. 1, 4 vs. 4) and guises (e.g. two goals placed at ends of each goal line) are suitable and highly effective. To put this into simple terms, let’s look at a piece of research from 1978 conducted by Kerr and Booth. They took two groups of children, aged eight and twelve years old and had them toss beanbags at a target on the floor. One group practised throwing from the same spot (closed), the other group from a variety of different spots (open), which was followed by a final accuracy test. The results showed that those throwing from the fixed spot performed worse accuracy-wise by a group average of 2.89 inches.

Cantor et al. (2018) notes that, ‘Development of the brain is an experience-dependent process’, and therefore the experiences we immerse children in are vitally important to their learning, motivation to continue, and enjoyment of that particular subject or sport. Being specific to athlete development, the learning environment that a club or coach creates for its athletes is at the core of whether development is maximised or not. One area that coaches can improve upon is how they feed back to their athletes pre-, during, and post-session, making use of technology to assist with helping athletes visualise the development process. Vanderka et al. (2020) looked at the use of visual feedback during jump-squat training and found that, ‘The use of instant feedback during jump-squat training in athletes was beneficial for improving multiple performance tasks over six weeks of training.’ A further example of this could be showing footage of a specific soccer player to a young player on a tablet at the side of a session to highlight a particular learning point. The use of role models cannot be undervalued, either within a group...