Representative Learning Design

An introduction

Last week, I highlighted an Ecological Holistic Approach to talent development. In line with this approach, this week we will zoom in on understanding the role of the environment and the processes that can enable talent development and skill acquisition.

Have you ever seen a player look great on a driving range or not miss a shot shooting stand-still jumpers and wonder to yourself, why doesn’t that translate to games?

In this week’s 3 points, I’ll introduce representative learning design, and why understanding this framework can help your players transfer their skills from training to performance.

1. What is representative learning design?

Representative learning design (RLD), introduced by Dr. Ross Pinder (2011) is a framework that assesses the degree a practice or drills accurately ‘represent’ the performance environment they are meant to be preparing athletes for. RLD suggests that the more training accurately simulates competition demands, the more likely skill developed in training is to transfer to competition. Makes sense to me.

According to Pinder, there are two key elements used to accurately simulate the performance environment:

• Action fidelity (movement)- the extent to which an athlete's movements during training mimic the required movement behavior during competition.

• Functionality (information) - the degree to which a practice task or drill contains the same informational cues present during competition, ensuring that actions are based on realistic learning contexts.

2. The importance of coupling:

The key here is providing athletes with drills and practice tasks that incorporate both movement and information that are representative of the performance environment.

• What are the movements your athletes are making during a performance

• What information is being presented to the athletes during a performance?

• How can we create tasks in training that require athletes to process both?

A quick anecdote as a case study:

My role as a basketball player was to shoot. I spent most of my time practicing by myself on a shooting machine. I would shoot near-perfect passes and essentially Tee up each shot in a quiet gym. From an RLD perspective, this was not very representative. Most of the shots I would take during a performance were running off screens, catching passes from all angles, and using different footwork, all while reading the defense to assess if they could disrupt my shot and doing this in front of thousands of screaming fans. My point is not to say that repetition is not important; I believe it is. But there were a lot of elements that represented my performance environment that were not showing up in training.

So, how can we create representative practice environments to enhance skill transfer?

3. Dr. Keith Davids, Professor of Motor Learning in Sport & Human Performance, provides a framework to do just that: