The role of elite coaches’ expertise in identifying key constraints on long jump performance: how practice task designs can enhance athlete self-regulation in competition

ABSTRACT

Understanding performance behaviours provides useful information for practitioners that can assist with the design of tasks to enhance the specificity of practice. In this study, the experiential knowledge of six elite long jump coaches was investigated using a constructivist grounded theory approach, with the aim of furthering our understanding of the competitive behaviours of elite long jump athletes and how they adapt actions to the emotional and physical demands of performance environments. Findings offer a coaches’ perspective on three performance contexts which shape athlete performance – perform, respond and manage – towards two common performance intentions (maximum jump and sub-maximal jump). We contend that these findings reflect how coaches perceive performance as a series of connected events (jumps), during which athlete intentionality facilitates self-regulatory strategies in the face of unique interactions between individual, task and environmental constraints across a competition. These findings highlight how individuals must continually co-adapt with constraints in performance environments supporting how athletes self-regulate using intentionality, emotions and cognitions. Practice task designs should, therefore, provide greater opportunities for athletes to learn to self-regulate in performance contexts, with opportunities to perform, respond and manage. Interpreting the coaches’ insights, we suggest that these major performance contexts of perform, respond and manage could, therefore, be strategically used to frame representative learning designs, providing a framework for better organisation of training tasks.

KEYWORDS:

• Experiential knowledge
• elite coaches
• long jump
• representative learning design
• ecological dynamics
• interacting constraints
• grounded theory
• affective learning design

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Chris McCosker

Chris McCosker is a PhD candidate based within the School of Exercise and Nutrition Science at the Queensland University of Technology. His programme of research is investigating an ecological dynamics approach to run-ups in long jump. He is an accredited level 2 sport scientist with Exercise & Sports Science Australia (ESSA) and is a sessional academic who teaches skill acquisition, motor control and principles of coaching and instructional practice.

Ian Renshaw

Ian Renshaw is an Associate Professor in Skill Acquisition in the School of Exercise & Nutrition Sciences, Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology. Ian has coached for over 35 years and is heavily involved in coach and teacher education across the world and has also worked with high performance teams in a consultancy capacity. Ian is particularity interested in developing constraint–led approaches for P.E. and coaching.

Scott Russell

Scott Russell holds a Masters degree from the Queensland University of Technology, where he is also undertaking his PhD in referee decision-making practice. His main area of research is within the School of Exercise and Nutrition Science, interrogating how referee decision–making influences movement coordination. He is a sessional academic who teaches skill acquisition, motor control and principles of physical activity in coaching. Scott is also a semi– professional referee, who is passionate about philosophical ideas and how they govern our interactions with our environments and futures.

Remco Polman

Remco Polman is Head of the School of Exercise & Nutrition Sciences at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Remco’s research is truly multi- and inter-disciplinary in nature and include work in a) sport, exercise and health psychology, b) exercise physiology (e.g. pacing), c) (injury) rehabilitation, d) biomechanics, e) training/conditioning in sport, exercise and PA for diverse populations, f) motor control and learning, and g) cognitive neuroscience (e.g., EEG, eye tracking). In addition, he is a qualified practicing sport and exercise psychologist (UK only; HCPC accredited sport and exercise psychologist).

Keith Davids

Keith Davids is Professor of Motor Learning at the Centre for Sports Engineering Research (CSER), where he leads the Skill Acquisition theme. His research programme in ecological dynamics investigates constraints on coordination tendencies in athletes and sports teams classed as nonlinear dynamical systems. Ideas from ecological psychology and nonlinear dynamics have been integrated into a Nonlinear Pedagogy. His research seeks to investigate affordances as constraints on emergent coordination tendencies in athletes and sports teams. In addition to his research Keith supervises several UK based and international doctoral students. Keith is also a journal and grant reviewer for several national and international publishing companies and organisations, and contributes to the MSc Human Factors in Sports Engineering module.