Sport expertise development and the constraints-led approach

Abstract

Objective: This review article delineates some important theoretical concepts that inform sport expertise acquisition studies. In particular, the principles of ecological psychology and dynamical systems theory have united together to form the ecological dynamics, a framework that provides the perfect platform through which to study the role of socio-cultural constraints upon sport expertise. Methodology: The body of information collected for this article was primarily extracted from peer- reviewed articles and academic books. This review article used Brazilian soccer as the case study. Results and discussion: Whilst the sports expertise literature has been guilty of somewhat polarising the influence of either practice or inherited attributes upon motor learning there are nonetheless many useful lessons to be learnt from this review article. For example, sport expertise development takes place over many years and includes numerous formal and informal pathways that athletes can take to excel.  Conclusion: The constraints-led approach has been promoted as a framework for understanding how people acquire perceptual-motor skills for sport and physical activities. On a practical level, this approach suggests that the major role of the coach or teacher is to manipulate key constraints in order to facilitate discovery of functional movement behavior.