When and How to Provide Feedback and Instructions to Athletes?—How Sport Psychology and Pedagogy Insights Can Improve Coaching Interventions to Enhance Self-Regulation in Training

In specialist sports coaching, the type and manner of augmented information that the coach chooses to use in communicating and training with individual athletes can have a significant impact on skill development and performance. Informed by insights from psychology, pedagogy, and sport science, this position paper presents a practitioner-based approach in response to the overarching question: When, why, and how could coaches provide information to athletes during coaching interventions? In an ecological dynamics rationale, practice is seen as a search for functional performance solutions, and augmented feedback is outlined as instructional constraints to guide athletes’ self-regulation of action in practice. Using the exemplar of team sports, we present a Skill Training Communication Model for practical application in the context of the role of a specialist coach, using a constraints-led approach (CLA). Further based on principles of a non-linear pedagogy and using the recently introduced Periodization of Skill Training (PoST) framework, the proposed model aims to support practitioners’ understanding of the pedagogical constraints of feedback and instruction during practice. In detail, the PoST framework’s three skill development and training stages work to (1) directly impact constraint manipulations in practice designs and (2) indirectly affect coaches’ choices of external (coach-induced) information. In turn, these guide practitioners on how and when to apply different verbal instruction methodologies and aim to support the design of effective skill learning environments. Finally, several practical guidelines in regard to sports coaches’ feedback and instruction processes are proposed

Effektorspezifische Bahnungsprozesse beim Betrachten von Basketball- und Fussballspielern

Klein-Soetebier T, Steggemann Y, Weigelt M. Effektorspezifische Bahnungsprozesse beim Betrachten von Basketball- und Fussballspielern. Zeitschrift für Sportpsychologie. 2011;18(4):155-162

Heatmap Analysis to Differentiate Diverse Player Types in Table Tennis—A Training and Tactical Strategy Development Potential

(1) Background: Computer-based analyses have been widely used to study aspects of various team and racket sports. However, such analyses have so far eluded table tennis, except in special competition forms, under fixed laboratory conditions or have only tracked the ball. The aim was to detect a basic, global, positional behavior, independent of the score. (2) Methods: We investigated the player position of professional male table tennis players with respect to handedness (right/left), playing system (offensive/defensive) and racket holding (shakehand/penholder) to determine the applicability of automated analysis systems. We used existing video data of competitive matches (N = 198 sets; 2006–2020) and transliterated them into an x–y coordinate system. From this, we were able to conduct a heatmap analysis for different types of players. (3) Results: The comparison between right- and left-handed players resulted in a significant difference in the positioning of the x coordinate (D = 0.5663; p = 0.001). Both groups positioned themselves on average in their own backhanded half of the table (Re: x = −0.22 m, Li: x = 0.39 m). (4) Conclusions: Our results have yielded valuable insights into the importance of analyzing positional behavior in a differentiated manner depending on handedness, playing strategy and racket holding posture

Motor Control Strategies in a Continuous Task Space

Schütz C, Weigelt M, Odekerken D, Klein-Soetebier T, Schack T. Motor Control Strategies in a Continuous Task Space. Motor Control. 2011;15(3):321-341.Previous studies on sequential effects of human grasping behavior were restricted to binary grasp type selection. We asked whether two established motor control strategies, the end-state comfort effect and the hysteresis effect, would hold for sequential motor tasks with continuous solutions. To this end, participants were tested in a sequential (predictable) and a randomized (nonpredictable) perceptual-motor task, which offered a continuous range of posture solutions for each movement trial. Both the end-state comfort effect and the hysteresis effect were reproduced under predictable, continuous conditions, but only the end-state comfort effect was present under nonpredictable conditions. Experimental results further revealed a work range restriction effect, which was reproduced for the dominant and the nondominant hand

Sequenzeffekte im kontinuierlichen Posturraum

Schütz C, Weigelt M, Klein-Soetebier T, Schack T. Sequenzeffekte im kontinuierlichen Posturraum. In: Mattes K, Wollesen B, eds. Bewegung und Leistung- Sport, Gesundheit & Alter. Hamburg: Czwalina; 2010: 21

Motor hysteresis in continuous posture space

Schütz C, Weigelt M, Odekerken DMH, Klein-Soetebier T, Schack T. Motor hysteresis in continuous posture space. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology. 2010;32(Suppl.):S126

Modeling of Biomechanical Parameters Based on LTM Structures

Schütz C, Klein-Soetebier T, Schack T. Modeling of Biomechanical Parameters Based on LTM Structures. In: Ritter H, Sagerer G, Dillmann R, Buss M, eds. Human Centered Robot Systems: Cognition, Interaction, Technology. Cognitive Systems Monographs, 6. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag; 2009: 161-171