experimenting; not‘ just playing’( cf. Nash and Taylor 2021). As an example, a boxer sparring with a lower-level opponent to explore changes to their stance between regular and south-paw.
Expand
Expansive activity will involve a more deliberate focus by the athlete on motor patterns and team coordination solutions based on a pre-determined model. Not the rightly critiqued notion of a single, optimal technical model( Gray 2020). Instead, taking a target movement generated through observation of others, or coaching / biomechanist input, such as a model within identified parameters and principles, rather than an absolute prescription( Lindsay et al. 2024). Something that might be especially important to reduce injury risk( for example, Robinson et al. 2023), or where the athlete lacks the capacity to actively experiment. As an example, a judo player expanding by watching and discussing a throw with a coach, then combining imagery with semi-opposed practice against an opponent constrained by the inability to counter throw.
Refine
Based on our observations of coaches, refining is the typical activity that takes place across most sports, involving a gradual remodelling of selected movement patterns or team coordination. This involves making subtle changes to existing movement solutions based on a desirable level of functional task difficulty. This interaction can be considered by a gradual increase in functional task difficulty. Coaches can use the heuristic that once a movement solution is stabilised above a 75 % success rate, it is necessary to increase the challenge point( Farrow and Robertson 2017). This means movement is gradually refined towards a contextually optimal solution. As an example, a football coach plans to manipulate spatial constraints by changing pitch dimensions and progressively constraining defenders to walk, put hands behind their backs, or defend fully. The aim being to meet a challenge point of circa 70 % success. Players find this too easy and are circa 90 % successful, so the coach changes – removes – defensive constraints to increase the challenge point( Yan et al. 2019).
Retrieve
Retrieval involves assessing the stability of a skill to determine if it needs further attention. This contrasts with what we are increasingly seeing in practice, of coaches using retrieval practice with verbal recall questioning.
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