Progressão
Progressão is a book, a podcast, and a long-term thinking project focused on football, learning, and skilful human behaviour. Our work approaches football from a complex, holistic, and ecological perspective, where players and all football actors are understood as living beings always in correspondence with their environment.
Progressão
#189 Drills vs games: a false debate?
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Welcome to the Progressão podcast.
In this episode, we take on one of the most common debates in football coaching:
drills versus games.
Should players first learn technique through repetition, and then apply it in the game? Or should learning take place directly through game-like situations?
These questions are often discussed as if they represent two separate methods. But in this episode, we suggest that this might be the wrong way to look at training altogether.
Building on our earlier discussions around ecological dynamics and skill, we explore how different theoretical perspectives — especially information-processing and ecological approaches — shape the way coaches design training.
We discuss why the distinction between drills and games can be misleading, how the same exercise can be understood in very different ways, and why learning in football may be better understood as a holistic, relational process rather than a collection of isolated parts.
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Ruokka Stella on portugainen löytämistä Jale Staneli ja Jusipää Kastanalainen toita: Ruokkaella How we have misunderstood fotolla. We exploramme the beautiful jojänä, kompleksja relationsjaan kumän ja environistä ja the nature of skill in fotolla. Welkom divat!
SPEAKER_00Podcast. In this episode we discuss a very kommon topikä fotball koaching: drills versus games. So, Janni, should we trannan usanka isolated drills or should we focus on gambaista training?
SPEAKER_01Unbelievabless question! An important question! Parilla debatina is on trills or games. And then we can also think, is this question that we should ask, mutta mitä we diskussia lida. So, for example, there are more ekological dynamics-based coaching or coaching where coaches use a lot of games. Then there is a lot of coaching that is trill-based. So there is a debate which one we should use, or should we in the beginning of player kind of coaching when he comes or she comes, five, six-year-old kid comes to training start with the drills to the basic skills, and then we can go to games when the basic skills are ready. So, the idea is that some parts of training should be based on maybe, for example, ecological dynamics or game-based concepts, and some parts should still be based on more traditional kind of information processing approaches. So, players first learn the basic techniques like set, and then it can be more ekological game-based way. But there are some problems already in this kind of framing of the question, and these assumptions we would like to challenge.
SPEAKER_00Yes, indeed. Wherever ekological dynamics is discussed, this kind of split you only mentioned often appears so that part of the training should be traditional and part ecological. But in this episode, we argue that this division is not necessary. And that, from an ekological perspective, you can design training for all ages and levels, from children to elite players without needing to separate these approaches. So, J.
SPEAKER_01There is this very common misunderstanding that ekological dynamics simply means playing games, while traditional approaches mean doing drills. But this is not accurate actually. So, game-based training has been existing long before ekological dynamics makes its way to sports sciensä. Drills can also be used within different theoretical approaches. So, when we look at training session from outside, it is not always possible to say whether it is based or whether the coach is more kind of information processing or ekological dynamics based so that you can use a lot of different exercises even when you are ekological coach. The difference lies deeper in the underlain assumptions about learning and behaviour, and that then affects the training.
SPEAKER_00Yes, so let's take a type example. So, in a more traditional information processing approach, a coach might design training so that a player first learns a tekniik, for example an inside foot pass through repetition and very often without opposition. Then the player moves into a game-like situation where the goal is to apply that technique. And at the same time, decision-making and game understanding are gradually added. And in this way, training is seen as building a kind of. a jigsaw puzzle. First the pieces, then the wall.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. A puzzle or a pyramid. You can build the basic tekniik, or basic movement techniques even before the basic football techniques. Then you go to more football skills that are learned in the games. So the idea is that human performance can be broken into parts. And once those parts are trained separately, they can be combined into effective performance, like in the puzzle or in a pyramid. So even in games like exercises, the coach may still focus on a specific technical action, such as passing, and design the exercise to create many passing situations, and then the coach may adjust rules space or player numbers to increase repetition of that specific action, namely passing here. Feedback also is often directed at the individual player and their tekniik.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and if I can add to that before ekological dynamics. There was debate inside the information processing approach or framework that should train more like tekniik and drills, or more like game-based approach, like teaching geins from understanding for example. What was that debate on, J. Do you remember it well? I think it was the same that is now that should you tray more like drills and refine the tekniik to perfection, or is it more important to apply the skills or the tekniikä more realistic situations?
SPEAKER_01Exactly, yeah. It was little like this so for example passing. Should we have a lot of repetition in controllers environment, näin in drills, or then in more games-like situations. Mutta it was still about kind of action, more kind of reduced action like passing for example. It was not like building up for example, as more global skill in football. This discussion. Do we focus on passing and dripping, for example, or do we do focus on building up skills or preventing progression skills that are more than global concepts, and inside those you might have passing, for example.
SPEAKER_00And also which is more important, tekniik or game understanding? And what we discussed the game understanding in the last episodes.
SPEAKER_01From an ekological perspective, the starting point would be different. Instead of separating tekniik and decision making, learning is seen as holistic. So it's perception/action. You perceive the environment, gives you, or you can find the information from the environment that then guides your action and all the time this loop is ongoing. It's not about first learning a movement and then transferring it into the game, it's about becoming skillful within the game environment itself.
SPEAKER_00This does not mean that we cannot simplify training. So we can still design exercises with fewer players, less pressure or sometimes even no opposition. But the logic is different, and this is the key. So the goal is not to practice a technique in isolation but to help players attune to meaningful information in the environment.
SPEAKER_01Let's take an example of press release in football. So we have for example centerback or fullback or even goalkeeper on the ball. And opponent is pressing, and we would like to go behind the first pressing line. And then for example, we don't have good supports on this situation same way, so we cannot pass. But we don't want to still give the ball away. This applies for professional football and youth football also, it can be a concept for a coach or a team. So, then what do we do? We can release the press for example by driving the ball or playing 1-2 with somebody, and for that we can then design different kinds of exercises, from game-based or situation-based. So, one key difference is where we direct the player's attention in the exercises. In traditional approaches, attention is often directed inward toward the body and the correct technique. So, in this pressure lease exercise, we would be then thinking about the player skill or player techniques. Can he kind of dribble the ball in different directions without anything, without context? It's the player technique. In ecological approaches, attention is directed outward toward the relationship between the player and the environment, where the press is coming from, for example.
SPEAKER_00So instead of asking how do we teach the correct technique, we ask how do we help the player act skillfully in this environment. So let's take another example with a young child learning to pass. Instead of repeating the movement in isolation, we can immediately include meaningful context. There is another player, for example, there is space, there might even be a simple obstacle. So now the child is not just learning a movement, they are learning to act in relation to something. And as the environment becomes richer with movement, opponents and changing situations, the same skill continues to develop. It is not that first we train technique and later we add decision making. It is always the same skill becoming more refined.
SPEAKER_01When the child is with the ball and the parent for eksamping towards her or him from left for example, and the child learns to go to the right. And when the press comes from right, and the child learns to go to the left, that is already the technique and the decision making in the same thing. So we start to understand our environment and how to act in that in a meaningful way. Useful analogy is learning to walk. Basically, no one teaches like explicitly walking by first isolating perfect technique and then transferring it into real life. Instead, the child learns by interacting with the environment. So we see that walking is possible in our environment, our body can also do that. So by trying, adapting, balancing, falling, trying again, and what's in the environment, and over time the movement becomes more stable and more effective. So there was not the perfect walking technique learned first, but all the time the walking skill in the environment in different surfaces for example.
SPEAKER_00And the same applies to football. So players do not need a set of tools before they can start playing, they develop those abilities through interaction with the game. And like a growing organism, skills develop gradually, becoming richer and more stable over time. And as we mentioned before, it depends on the context how much we need to simplify, for example, the exercises. So sometimes we need real simple exercises like the example from kid, or then we can have very complex one like with elite players. So it really depends on the context.
SPEAKER_01So when we return to the original question: drills vs games. We might say that this is not really the right question even. We think that both drills and games can exist in training. Mutta what matters is the underlying view of learning, koska change the way we design these games or drills. Because we can train games also that might not be very representative of the real football game. So the question is: is skills something we build piece by piece, or is it something that emerges through interaction with the environment?
SPEAKER_00So, from our perspective, ecological dynamics offers a more coherent way to understand learning and to design training. However, every coach makes their own choices. The important thing is to understand the assumptions behind those choices.