You finish a session and it looked good. The players hit their targets, the drills flowed, and you go home thinking the work is done and they are ready to play. Then Sunday comes and none of what you saw in practice shows up in the game. Most coaches have had that week, and most have learned to trust the practice session a little less and the game a little more.

That gap between practice and the game runs through Ana Ramos's work. Ana is a volleyball coach, coach educator and researcher at the University of Porto, and in Episode 21 she talked to Keith and Martyn about how she designs a season. This week Ian, hearing it for the first time, and Keith, who was involved in Ana's PhD, go back to that conversation to see what coaches can take from it.

The Game Is the Test

Ana's research method is action research: observe, analyse, plan, act, reflect, then go round again. Ian's point was that most coaches already work in cycles like this every week. The difference is how systematic it is. Keith added why the method matters. Early work in ecological dynamics was mostly laboratory studies, and people asked how anyone knew it worked in practice. Ana's studies answered this question. They ran across full competitive seasons, one of them across two, and used a mixed methods approach combining numbers on how the team moved with what the players said in focus groups and interviews.

Ian picked up a point Martyn made in the original episode: the game is the best test of the practice design. Ian provides his own version of this himself. Pick one thing from a match (the rate limiter), set criteria at the start of the session, measure again at the end, then check the next game. Keith's caution was that the session only shows you performance.

"You can only infer perceptual motor learning by looking at performance." - Keith Davids

Build the Week From the Last Match

Ana's week starts with a day off after Sunday's match, and the hosts drew out a point that is often forgotten: players need to recover emotionally from a big game as well as physically. Tuesday and Wednesday are built from what the staff saw in the last game, focused on their own team. Thursday to Saturday turns to the next opponent, often in 3v3 games with two balls in play rather than six against six. Before any of it, the players watch the video, so they know why the session looks the way it does.

Keith linked this to the constraints continuum he and Ian have been working on. A coach recently emailed Keith because he and a colleague disagreed about whether a practice was "ecological" or not. Keith's answer was that you can move up and down the continuum depending on what the athletes need at the time. When the focus is one opponent's strong wide attack, you don't need the full game. You can invent small games that direct players' attention and intentions to that problem.

Same Session, Different Criteria

Ana's six steps for building a practice task end with one most coaches skip: set the success criteria, and change them for each player. Ian's view is that this is how a team session can cater for the individual. Every squad has its strongest players, a middle group, and players who are only just holding on, and the same task can be measured differently for each. Keith admitted it isn't something he has solved: one player in the task might need to explore while another needs a narrow focus on one skill.

The same thinking applies to game size. Ian has had a coach ask why his juniors weren't playing more 11v11. Keith's reply was that in 11v11 you can go minutes without touching the ball. Small-sided games give more chances to act, as long as they keep the parts of the full game that matter.

"The small sided game should simulate carefully the aspects of the full sided game." - Keith Davids

Repetition Without Repetition, and Comfort Reps

With several sessions a week across a long season, Ana can't invent a new practice every time. She keeps the structure familiar and changes the sequence and starting points. Keith called Bernstein's repetition without repetition one of the most important ideas in ecological dynamics for a coach to master: adding enough ambiguity that players have to solve a problem.

"Repetition itself is not the same as repetition without repetition." - Keith Davids

Ian added that the variability has to be representative. A constraint added for the sake of it isn't enough: "It's got to be purposeful, it's got to be intentional... you've got to be able to defend it." Ana also uses comfort reps before big matches. Ian's worry was that they can slide into repetition after repetition; his version is game-like practice, varied a little, so players go in thinking "I can do this". For Keith, Ana is moving players towards the narrow end of the continuum to prepare them for competition, and they are not planted there forever. Ian linked Ana's line about being "brave enough to give some chaos" to Jay Carter (podcast coming soon) NZ national golf coach asking whether he would be brave enough to get fired, and to Ana throwing her drill book in the bin every season.

Worse Before Better

Ana's season-long study followed a team of 14 and 15 year olds. When she brought in a more complex game model, the team's coordination dropped and their understanding of the game rose. Given more time, coordination came back and understanding was at its highest. Her summary, as Ian quoted it: you will perform worse in a more complex game model, but at the end of the day you will understand the game better. Five players from that team went on to play for the national team.

"When the game model got harder, coordination dropped and understanding rose. Both needed time."

Keith described this as synergy formation in a team, and said a coach who changes the model has to be ready for the dip. Ana had no pressure to win. As Martyn said in the original episode, a Premier League manager wanting to change the system doesn't always get that time.

The review closed on knowledge of and knowledge about the performance environment. Keith's view is that video and explanation have a place, but mostly to prompt what players then learn to see in action. Ian would still build in uncertainty, priming the opposition in practice to do "something random" one time in five so players don't expect the scouting report to play out exactly.

Ana's work keeps coming back to one question: what is the game telling you about your practice? Keith's closing view was that her contribution is to show ecological dynamics working "in the messy, noisy, dirty day to day, week to week coaching environment."

Listen to Ian and Keith's Guest Review (Episode 112) and the original conversation with Ana in Episode 21 on Buzzsprout and all major podcast platforms. Listen at https://www.buzzsprout.com/2354827]

- Ian Renshaw & Keith Davids, The Constraints Collective