Summary:

Dr. Steve Smith is Senior Lecturer in Sport Coaching and Psychology Programme Leader for Sport Coaching and Physical Education and Head of Elite Sport Programme Department of Sport, Exercise and Health at the University of Winchester. Steve’s professional focus is exploring how practice environments shape competitive performance. He is especially passionate about sharing the principles of ecological dynamics with coaches and practitioners. His work spans multiple sports, and he is committed to bridging the gap between theory and applied coaching, helping athletes and coaches better understand the environments that support learning, resilience, and excellence in competition.

In this conversation, Steve states that a ‘major reset’ is needed in how coaches and trainers think that people actually learn. He discusses the importance of shifting coaching and training to a nonlinear approach using the ecological dynamics and constraints led methods. Coaches and trainers need to guide intentions and use constraints to create self-organizing, adaptable and agile performers – especially those who must function in highly ambiguous, challenging and high consequence environments – such as law enforcement. Dr. Smith wants coaches to understand how people actually learn, and he emphasizes that genuine performance improvement non-linear and will normally involve periods of ‘struggle’ where performance will suffer before achieving peak results.

Takeaways

• Intentions – what needs to be accomplished – needs to guide performer actions.

• Constraints are essential components of any system.

• The best performance improvement is not linear.

• Performer development needfully involves setbacks before peak performance.

• Understanding the system – the performer, the task and the environment - is essential in achieving learning goals.

• The journey to meaningful improvement will be complex and non-linear.

• Effective training requires acknowledging constraints present in the performance domain and ensuring those are engineered into the learning environment.

• Self-defense techniques are influenced by realistic situational constraints.

• Long-term development often leads to better outcomes.