Motor learning and control

2. • Coach since age of 15 (up till U17 and Women)
• Bachelor in Sports & Wellness
• Uefa C
• Coerver Coaching
• Internships at Dutch Premier League Clubs:
sv Roda JC & AFC Ajax
• Certified Ajax Camps & Clinics Coach
• Master Human and Movement Science:
Amsterdam  Liverpool

3. • Motor skills and cognitive development:
- Age-specific characteristics
• Motor learning stages:
- Fitts
• Football and motor learning:
- Feedback, focus and training
• (Learning process of talented players)

4. • Schoolperiod (6-12 years)
• Adolescence (12-22 years)
• Maturity (20/25-55/65 years)

5. • Flexible
• Dynamic
• Eye-hand coordination at its optimum
• Huge improvement of reactive speed

6. • Gross motor skills:
Increase of elasticity, balance, speed, agility,
strength
• Fine motor skills improves as well
• 10-12 year peak motor learning age

7. • More insight
• Logical thinking
• Seperate fantasy vs reality
• Improvement of self-image (environment very
important)built self-esteem
• Independancy
• Selfishness  group thinking (friend to friends)
• ‘Work’ age
• Process instead of immediate pleasures

8. • Flexible and limber
• Concentration
• Fast fatigueable
• Sensitive for coordination training
• Egocentric (my ball)

9. • Very good motor skill trainability  increase
of ball control + coordination
• Enthousiastic
• Studious
• Ego  group
• Limited endurance capacity and strength

10. • Still good trainability of motor skills  good
coordination
• Balanced body structure
• Growth Spurt
• Competitiveness
• Group thinking  team goals
• Critical

11. • Early, mid & late adolescence
• Puberty = event
• Growth Spurt  disturbed coordination
• Testosteron levels increase  powerful
• Increase of endurance capacity
• Load vs load capacity/limit

12. • Self-image
• Very critical
• Logical thinking
• Hypothetical thinking capacity  ‘football
problems’
• Experimental thinking  variation
• Combinational thinking  combine ‘football
problems’

13. • Early adolescence
• Growth spurt decrease in coordination,
speed and flexibility
• Bodily disbalance (PHV)  decreased physical
load capacity
• Less progression in motor skills
• Egocentric
• Own opinion and self-assertion

14. • Mid adolescence
• Physical growth back in balance  increased
load capacity (strength and endurance)
• Increased coordination
• Analytical ability
• Responsibility
• Identity crisis

15. • Late adolescence
• Optimal age to increase the training load
(=volume x intensity)
• Team performamce
• Realistic

16. • Ready to play in the 1st team/U23
• Brain development (±24 years)
• Importance of motor learning with 1st/U23?

17. ‘Learning and training of motor skills both have
to do with a process of practice, which results
in experience, whereby permanent changes in
one or more skills are expected.’ (translated
from Beek, 2010)
Specificity
Sensory information!

19. • Open:
Movement is fixed
• Closed:
Unfixed movements
• Examples?

20. Fitts´ learning stages:
• Cognitive phase
• Associative phase
• Autonomous phase

21. • Understanding the movement
• Information selection based on conscious
decisions  cognitive
• Freezing degrees of freedom  clumsy look
• Verbal instruction
• Visual information
• No feeling (in the end)
• Trial and error
• Learning by imitation

22. • Getting the movement into the body
• Associations information and action
• Comparing sources of information  feeling
• Discriminate information
• Intrinsic feedback (KPKR)
• Timing in time instead of space
• Convert in controlled patterns
(DOF and reflexes)
• Practice at match speed
• Watch out for: perfect error!

23. • It’s all about the goal (e.g. score)
• Feedback: only Knowledge of Result!
• Knowledge of Performance  cognitive phase
• Flexible and stable  teach tactical skills
• Performing under pressure (e.g. Torres (CFC),
C. Ronaldo (Portugal))
• Training versus coaching, gain match
experience

25. Intrinsic Extrinsic
(augmented)
Re-investment of knowledge hypothesis

26. • False/bad instruction is dramatic for the learning
process

27. Feedback dependancy

28. Verbal instructions and visual demonstrations
beforehand (talk, show, action)
KR  not immediately after the exercise
KP as quick as possible
2/3 aspects at a time

29. • Visual
• Auditive
• Proprioceptive
• Tactile

30. • KP or KR
• fading frequency
• bandwidth feedback
• self-selecting feedback
• summative feedback
• average feedback
• video feedback
 KIS principle:
Keep It Simple

31. • KP or KR
• fading frequency
• bandbreedte feedback
• zelfselecterende feedback
• summatieve feedback
• gemiddelde feedback
 KIS principe:
Keep It Simple

32.  Guided discovery learning

33. Smal Wide
Intern Is my knee of my
supporting leg
flexed enough
when I’m taking a
free kick
I need to shorten my
body explosively just
before I hit the ball
Extern Aim 20 cm to the
right of the wall
Aim at the goal or
watch for a teammate
who’s in a scoring
position near the goal

34. Form groups of 2/3 persons
Think of an exercise for one of the three learning stages:
1. Cognitive phase
2. Associative phase
3. Autonomous phase
Pick an age group and describe what kind of feedback and
focus you’ll be using.
Pick a skill you want them to learn.

35. • What is talent?
• “A talented youth player is a player who performs
better than peers during training and competition
AND has the potential to become an elite player
in the future.” (Howe et al., 1998; Helsen et al., 2000; Elferink-Gemser
et al., 2004, 2007)
• Ambiguity in literature:
“Talent = superior mastery of systematically
developed abilities (competencies) in any field of
human activity to a level that the individual
belongs to the top 10% of peers active in that
field.” (Gagné,1999).

36. • Mentale fitness (17,1%)
• Natural ability (17,0%)
• Physical fitness (17,1%)
• Training volume(11,6%)
• Sport specific motor skills (11,4%)
• Tactical skills (9,2%)
(van Rossum)

38. • With the same or less amount of training
hours  Faster development (Elferink-Gemser and Visscher,
2011)
• Differences in self-regulation, multi-tasking,
sport-specific knowledge, insight & viewing
habits and perception- & action time

39. • More info:
info@guidoseerdenfc.com
• www.facebook.com/guidoseerdenfc
@guidoseerden #guidoseerdenfc
• Online soon:
www.guidoseerdenfc.com