The Basketball Podcast

Episode 315: Kevin Mulcahy, Constraints Led Coaching

Apr 10, 2024

Kevin Mulcahy, a sports practice design specialist, discusses constraint-led coaching in sports. He explores manipulating task constraints, eliciting skills, and enhancing player performance. The podcast delves into cultural influences in basketball, the evolution of coaching practices, and the balance between structured coaching and player-led development.

01:15:31

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Episode guests

Kevin Mulcahy

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Quick takeaways

Constraints Led Coaching focuses on using constraints to enhance athlete performance.

Variability and game-like scenarios are crucial for skill development in sports coaching.

Transitioning from isolated drills to game-based approaches can improve player skill acquisition and decision-making.

Deep dives

Constraint-led Approach in Sports Coaching

In this podcast episode, Kevin discusses the constraint-led approach in sports coaching, which combines ecological dynamics and dynamic systems theory to use constraints effectively. The key concept is that constraints, including individual, task, and environmental factors, influence athletes' performance. Kevin highlights that understanding these constraints allows coaches to design practices that challenge and enhance players' skills within the dynamic and individual constraints they face.

Skill Learning as Exploration, Stabilization, and Exploitation

00:31

Introduction

2min

Constraint-Led Approach to Sports Coaching

23min

Enhancing Player Performance Through Constraints-Led Coaching

21min

Exploring Cultural Influences in Basketball Across Regions

2min

Evolution of Coaching Practices in Sports

22min

Success in Penalty Shootouts Without Formal Practice

2min

Exploring Coaching Approaches and Skill Development for Players

3min

Guest: Kevin Mulcahy, Sports Practice Design Specialist

Sports practice design specialist Kevin Mulcahy joins the Basketball Podcast to share insights on representative practice using a constraints-led approach.

Kevin is an experienced sports and conditioning coach who has worked with sports teams, athletes, professionals, and clubs across three continents for over 30 years. He is the owner-operator of the Design the Game Project, a platform that shares coaching insights and research with a progressive and learning-led audience.

Design the Game promotes a Constraints Led Approach to Motor Learning and coaching. Kevin has studied on and off the field how humans learn to move and learn skills for well over 20 years.

Through the Design the Game brand has run several mini online courses around motor learning, decision making in sport and practice design. Kevin also runs TMC Performance, a sports and conditioning, personal training business that caters to the overall health and lifestyle of his clients from athletes to busy professionals through a strength and conditioning for life and sport mindset and programming approach.

Kevin has a strong educational background in coaching science, with a BSc in Strength and Conditioning from Setanta College, a certificate in Nutritional Science and Coaching from Precision Nutrition, and a certificate in The Neuroscience of Decision Making from Barcelona FC

Breakdown

1:00 - Constraint Led Approach

7:00 - Manipulating Task Constraint

11:30 - Elicit Skill

16:00 - Technique Development

26:00 - Poet's Practice

34:00 - Feedback with Action

40:00 - Early in Learning

49:00 - History

52:00 - Playing Unstructured

59:00 - Affordances

1:03:30 - The Three Things