Experiential Knowledge Affects the Visual Search Behaviors of Sprint Coaches and Sport Biomechanists

Abstract

It is common for applied sport biomechanists and high-performance coaches to work closely together. A feature of this relationship is that both bring unique experiences and knowledge to the common goal of improving an athlete's performance. For sprint running, coaches and biomechanists place importance on different aspects of technique. The purpose of this paper was to determine if these differences in experiential knowledge impact coaches and biomechanists visual perception of sprinting technique. Sport biomechanists ( n = 12) and, expert ( n = 11) and developing ( n = 11) coaches watched video of athletes sprinting at two different speeds while wearing eye tracking glasses and, retrospectively, reported on the technique features observed. Mixed methods ANOVAs were used to determine visual search strategies and efficiency and used to indicate the relationship between visual search and verbal commentary data. The speed of video playback was the main determinant of visual search behavior, significantly impacting the visual search rate and relative fixation duration at a number of areas of interest. The use of a visual pivot indicated all participants' visual search strategies were efficiency driven. Overall, the verbal commentary did not completely align with the eye tracking data and there were varying degrees of agreement with the identified technique related areas of interest for coaches and biomechanists. However, differences in visual search strategy and verbal commentary suggest that experiential knowledge impacts participants' observation and perception of sprinting technique.

Expert cricket coaches’ conceptions of the fast-bowling technique and how they coach it

“…While coaches didn't believe that there was an ideal bowling technique, they did appear to have a clear idea of what they thought made up a 'good' bowling technique (see Figure 1a). This is in line with findings from tennis (Fetisova et al 2021), sprinting (Waters et al 2020;Thomson, Bezodis & Jones, 2009), golf (Smith et al 2012;Smith et al 2015), ice hockey (Mell et al 2017) gymnastics (Cote et al 1984) swimming (Moreno et al 2006) volleyball (Bian, 2003) and climbing (Mitchell et al 2020). In these studies, expert coaches had clear internal models of the relevant sports technique, which was made up of the key kinematic variables identified in the respective sport-related biomechanical literature.…”

A Review of Forward-Dynamics Simulation Models for Predicting Optimal Technique in Maximal Effort Sporting Movements

“…In the future, successfully evaluated forward-dynamics simulation models estimating individual-specific optimal techniques of sporting movements may be used as indicative rather than predictive tools within a coaching framework to aid applied practice and understanding [169,170]. The traditional coaching framework for analyzing and prescribing changes in technique tends to develop primarily via anecdotal evidence from experiential knowledge or other coaches, as well as scientific knowledge from group-based experimental research results [169,[171][172][173]. The knowledge and understanding used to inform decisions can be enhanced via forward-dynamics simulation models' more detailed consideration of individual constraints and processes such as robustness to perturbations.…”