In Ecological Dynamics there’s the concept of destabilization. That’s basically when you create a situation where an established solution (often a technique) is no longer viable to solve a problem the athlete faces. As the athlete works through new solutions, they destabilize the prior solution.
Why would we want to put athletes in these situations?
There are a couple of reason. One is that the solution they are using may increase injury risk. Another is that the current solution is unlikely to continue to be successful as the player progresses (or isn’t if they’ve already progressed). We’ve all seen things that work fine at 13, but just don’t get the job done at 15, for example.
The challenge we have is breaking players out of these habits (solutions) once established. We have to disrupt (destabilize) the existing pattern so a new one can develop.
There’s an example of this in an episode of the Coach Your Brains Out podcast. The focus is on changing an attacker’s arm swing technique.
Think about how you might be able to do something like this to break players out of existing patterns.
By the way, right after the discussion of destabilizing the arm swing there is a really interesting bit on how to judge when the player gets it.
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