Players & Team Sports are “Complex Systems”- implications for player development

(Originally posted on another blog site December, 2013)

In this short(ish) video I use an example of a player on the ball in football (soccer) to illustrate that players perceptual & motor systems are operating concurrently, not in isolated step by step processes. This has important implications for practice design, and brings to life the principle “simplification over decomposition” when dealing with a complex system — such as players performing in a dynamic team sport environment .

Mark Upton is co-creator of myfastestmile and the Coaching Science Manager at the English Institute of Sport.