Equipment modification can enhance skill learning in young field hockey players

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate whether performance of children can be improved by training with modified equipment that challenges movement execution. For that purpose, young field hockey players practiced with a modified and a regular hockey ball. The modified hockey ball enforces more variable movement execution during practice by rolling less predictably than a regular hockey ball and, thus, challenges the players’ stick–ball control. Two groups of 7- to 9-year old children, with 0 to 4 years of experience, participated in a crossover-design, in which they either received four training sessions with the modified ball followed by four training sessions with the regular ball or vice versa. In a pretest, intermediate test (i.e. following the first four training sessions) and a posttest, the participants dribbled an obstacle parcours with a regular ball. Results show that practice with the modified ball led to greater performance improvement than the intervention with the regular hockey ball. This performance improvement, however, was not predicted by experience and/or initial skill (i.e. pretest score). The findings indicate that by using modified equipment, sport trainers and physical education teachers can, presumably through enhancement of movement variability during practice, stimulate skill acquisition in young children.

Using Modified Equipment in Field Hockey Leads to Positive Transfer of Learning Effect

“…In other words, modifying equipment is considered a form of task constraint manipulation that challenges the performer to adapt to the new arrangement of constraints, resulting in a larger, degenerate movement repertoire (e.g., Davids et al, 2012 ; Ranganathan and Newell, 2013 ). For instance, Brocken et al (2020) found that practicing with a modified hockey ball that rolls less predictably than regular balls, which presumably increases movement execution redundancy and adaptivity, resulted in larger improvements in field hockey motor skills (based on a similar test as in the current study) than practicing with a regular ball. A second explanation is that equipment modification ensures better scaling of the equipment to the performer’s action capability.…”

“…Studies about modified equipment show that changing the equipment can have a positive effect on performance and learning (e.g., Farrow and Reid, 2010 ; Buszard et al, 2014 ; Timmerman et al, 2015 ; Limpens et al, 2018 ; Oppici et al, 2018 ; Brocken et al, 2020 ; Nor Azmi et al, 2020 ). At the moment, two explanations dominate in the literature.…”

“…A validated field hockey skills test was used that consisted of items assessing ball control and shooting skills ( Mekel and Cremer, 2016 ; Brocken et al, 2020 ). The test is a track consisting of different skills that need to be performed as quickly as possible in a fixed order (see Figure 2 ).…”

“…Indeed, studies using modified sporting equipment show that changing the equipment can have a positive effect on performance and learning. For example, researchers have shown positive effects of modified racket size or net height in tennis ( Buszard et al, 2014 , 2016 ; Timmerman et al, 2015 ; Limpens et al, 2018 ), or modifying a the mass distribution of the ball in field hockey ( Brocken et al, 2020 ). These beneficial effects are typically attributed to implicit shaping and/or increasing the learners adaptability.…”

Skill acquisition practices of coaches on the British Para swimming World Class Programme

“…Constraintsbased learning (CBL) is also thought to promote implicit learning processes by way of a reduction in the accrual of explicit skill knowledge. 25 According to this framework, coordinated movements emerge as a function of learners adapting to the constraints imposed on them during practice. These constraints involve the individual characteristics of the learner (organismic constraints), the requirements of the task (task constraints), and the environmental conditions (environmental constraints).…”