Book Review – Learning To Be an “Ecological” Coach by Rob Gray

I previously reviewed Rob Gray’s first book, How We Learn to Move. I haven’t read his second book, Learning to Optimize Movement, in large part because I listen to his podcast and wasn’t sure I needed another read on similar topics. When I heard his third book, Learning To Be an “Ecological” Coach: Developing Attuned, was going to take a very specific look at coaching, though, it definitely went on my reading list.

Here’s a quote from early in the book that told me it was going to be pretty much exactly what I was hoping for:

“How can coaches develop skills in manipulating constraints, picking up the affordances of the athletes we are working with, observing movement, stepping in with instruction to guide exploration, co-adapting practice, using demonstration, teaching in group settings, use data to inform their practice design? Notice I am calling these things “skills”. We are not going to just acquire knowledge about these things. We are going to focus on how coaches can develop their ability to do them, in a specific context. This has been identified as a key limitation in most coach development and education programs…”

Some things to know going in

Before I dive into reviewing the content, let me address something first. This book needed another round of edits. I don’t mean that from a structural perspective. No problems there, from my perspective. I mean in terms of typos and the like. There are quite a few of them. That no doubt will bother some readers more than others.

The other thing I’ll say is that Gray is an academic. While he’s also a practitioner, his writing is strongly influenced by the academic side of things. Lots of citations and references to research (pages of them at the back of the book). Language that will probably challenge many/most readers in places. It’s not as bad as reading an academic paper, but it isn’t always as easy as it might be.

From a content perspective, the first couple chapters essentially frame what comes later. Here Gray talks a bit about skill acquisition theory, but it’s not a deep dive like in his first two books. That’s a theme throughout. He generally points readers to that prior work for deeper exploration. I definitely don’t think you have to read those books first, but at least having a basic understanding of ecological dynamics, constraints led approach, and related topics is useful. To that end, you may find the videos here useful.

Knowledge “of” vs “about”

The first proper chapter of the book discusses the difference between “knowledge of” and “knowledge about”. In our sporting context you can look at the difference this way. Knowledge of something is the ability to perform that action, skill, etc. Knowledge about, on the other hand, is basically stuff you can verbalize.

Gray uses two examples to explain.

The first is bike riding. He describes in the book how most people cannot correctly tell you how to turn left on a bicycle, but they can certainly do it without trouble. This is a case where they clearly have knowledge of, but don’t actually have knowledge about.

The second example flips that around. Rob works a lot in baseball. As he writes, however:

“I have a lot of knowledge about baseball batting. To be immodest, I understand the constraints, information, attractors, etc. as well as probably anyone in the world. But I have a very strict rule I use when doing on-field demonstrations – get someone else to swing the bat! If I did my own demos, I would immediately lose all credibility because my knowledge of hitting is very low.”

Gray goes on to frame this about vs. of difference in terms of coach development. A lot of what happens in that space is collecting knowledge about. That’s watching videos, reading books, going to conferences, etc. There’s valuable information to be had in this about space, to be sure. What Gray argues, however, is that it shouldn’t be confused with the need to acquire knowledge in the of space – the actual doing.

How do we acquire knowledge of coaching? Through the deliberate practice of coaching, of course. But also through interacting with other coaches.

Representative Learning Design

The first chapter of what I would consider the core of the book looks at Representative Learning Design. You may translate that to mean game-like. I personally have been using the term “game context” to describe the idea that we’re ultimately preparing players to play the game, so we should train them in a way that mimics the game as much as possible – is representative of the game.

Here’s how Gray talks about ensuring practice activities are representative:

“How, as a coach, do you know whether the information available to an athlete in practice is representative? There are a few important qualities I look for. First, representative information is dynamic: the opportunities for action it specifies appear and disappear over time. Second, it specifies events as they will occur in the game, not just in practice. Third, it is variable–it doesn’t specify the same affordance (opportunity for action) on each repetition.”

Here’s a great quote on this topic from the book.

That, of course, is just the first level. Simply being able to tell what sport you’re practicing for doesn’t automatically make things representative.

Putting the Constraints Led Approach into action

Ecological Dynamics (ED) and the Constraints Led Approach (CLA) now fully come to the forefront of the discussion of coaching application. One of the major challenges coaches just starting to learn about these concepts – especially CLA – is working out how to apply them in practice. This is especially frustrated by the fact that you can’t simply give them a clear set of solutions.

Inherent in the ED approach is the idea that every player is different. As a result, they won’t all respond to things the same way. Thus, there is a heavy dose of art and creative problem-solving required to coach in this manner (arguably, to do it well in any manner).

Another area of push-back on CLA is the idea that coaches can’t have an idea of the movement solution we want the player working toward. The misconception is that under ED/CLA the coach just sits back and let’s them work everything out for themselves. As Gray notes, though:

“Remember, as a coach, we are not going to deny the fact that we know something about the new movement solution we would like our athletes to have. We want to pick constraints that are going to lead the athlete in a certain direction in their search for a new solution.”

The chapters in the middle part of the book discuss how we do that. They cover the topics of:

• Designing Effective Constraints & Using The CLA
• Making A Skill Easier For A New Learner
• Coaching To The Individual Athlete & Working With Groups
• Educating A Coach’s Attention & Learning To Observe Movement
• Perceiving The Affordances Of Others
• Using Imagery, Demonstration & Verbal Instruction
• What To Do Next: Adapting Practice

I grabbed a bunch of quote and snippets through these chapters. I’m sure other readers will do the same.

The stuff around practice

The next group of chapters look at things a bit more broadly. They explore the environment we create and how we influence players on a psychological level. Topics include:

• Creating A Culture And A Form Of Life
• Inspiring Motivation, Autonomy & Confidence
• Embracing The Chaos And Adapting To The Constraints Of Coaching
• Rethinking How We Track & Assess Progress

The motivation chapter was so full of great takeaways that I had to stop pulling quotes and just bookmark the whole chapter for re-reading! That was less true of the chapter on assessing. There are definitely ideas there, but Gray notes it’s a fledgling area of research. Plus, there isn’t much for a volleyball coach to latch on to as the examples aren’t from particularly similar sports.

Coach education and development

The last chapter brings thing back around to the question of knowledge about vs. knowledge of. This is specifically in regards to coaching. Citing a bit of research, Gray suggests that some things – the about stuff – can probably be reasonably addressed through coach education. The rest – the of parts – require more “in situ” development, to use his terminology.

Here’s an example.

In one study researchers focused on teaching the value of external feedback over internal, and of not providing instruction to an athlete while they were performing (better to do it before or after). This was done via a presentation. They found that the coaches involved did use more external and less internal feedback after the training. There was no real change in the timing of their instruction, however. Gray’s hypothesis is that this could be because the feedback element falls more into knowing (about) while the instruction timing is more in the doing (of) realm.

The conclusion – unsurprisingly – is that while coaches can clearly learn about coaching through education, actually learning to coach happens in the coaching domain.

Conclusion

Although the book has its faults, I think Learning To Be an “Ecological” Coach is very much worth reading. If you’re at all like me, there will be loads of bits you highlight and areas you’re likely to refer back to later. Definitely recommended reading.