Non Linear Design - The 5 Core Principles

When coaching using a non-linear approach, practice design and delivery should adhere to these 5 core principles:

Representative Learning Design

The content of practice should represent slices of the game.  Practice activities should provide players with the same types of information the game will provide.  Drills and activities do not always have to look like the game, but they should feel like the game.  Through these types of representative activities we get repetition without repetition.

Functional Variability

Activities should not ask players to do the same thing, the same way, on repeat. We want players to have lots of time on task, but we want them to use different techniques, patterns, strategies, etc. to achieve the same outcome. Activities should players to repeat the process of solving a problem to achieve an outcome, not repeat the movement.

Focus of Attention

Everything we ask a player to do requires them to focus their attention. There are two ways they can focus that attention...internally or externally. In non-linear coaching we want activities that move the players attention away from what their body is doing and how its moving (internal focus) to what they have to achieve as an outcome (external focus).  When practice activities are not representative and become isolated and unopposed players shift their focus of attention to internal.  What are my skates doing?  What am I doing with my stick and the puck?  Am I turning in the correct direction?

Perception-Action Coupling

We do not just want players acting because we told them to, i.e. following a script, we want them to act based on what they see, hear, and feel. We want actions to be the result of perception. We also want our players to learn that actions create new perceptions.  You perceive to act, and you act to perceive.  Practice activities in a non- linear approach ensure that actions remain coupled to the players perceptions.  When you remove this coupling players need a script to follow, the focus becomes internal and representativeness and variability are likely to not exist.

Constraint Manipulation (CLA)

The previous four principles are design related.  This principle is both design and delivery related.  Rather then direct, instruct, and tell players what to do and how, when, and where to do it (scripting solutions), you make changes to the various information sources the activity provides to guide their discovery of skilled solutions.  Take a 1v1 RLD drill that requires a player to catch a rim, play off the wall and attack the net under pressure of a defender.  The problem to solve is clear - get off the wall and generate a shot.  You could change the location of the player catching the rim.  Move them on their backhand and forehand.  Reduce the space.  Increase the space.  Add a 2nd offence player.  Add a 2nd defender.  All these manipulations change the information the players are required to perceive but the problem does not change - get off the wall and generate a shot.  What you are doing though is guiding the players in their process of finding solutions to this problem.  You are not telling them what to do.  When you reduce the space, you provide opportunity for puck protection and driving through coverage as a solution.  When you increase the space you provide opportunity to attack space.  When you provide a 2nd offence player you provide opportunity to use passing and support as a solution.  In non-linear terms we refer to these opportunities as affordances and the purpose of constraint manipulation is to create these affordances for players.

Coaching to these core principles has the following benefits:

• practice is dynamic and more engaging & enjoyable

• long term learning and recall improves

• better practice to game transfer

• decision making develops

• skill acquisition is enhanced

• technical proficiency increases