This thought hit me while I was watching my first ever field hockey match. I was there to cheer on a friend in their grand final, and I suddenly realised that I had never seen this game played live.
It was thoroughly confusing to begin with, beyond the obvious use of hockey sticks to trap and direct the ball. After about 10 minutes, I could see some player formations, their positions dynamically changing as the passage of play regularly swapped from attacking to defending. For the most part, I watched in awe as set plays for short corners were discussed and executed, although the ball moved so fast that I could barely see it! I do not envy the goalkeepers.
Even as I sat there watching, I could not help thinking that I could possibly add this sport to my ever growing repertoire, with a bit of training. Does anybody else do that? Does everybody look at a sport with sometimes very limited obvious overlap to their current sport and think, I could probably work it out?
Does everybody sit there and watch a new, different sport thinking "I could do that!". I don't think so.
When I watch sport, I can immediately see the elements of the skill which I could probably pick up easily and what I might find difficult based on my understanding of my action capabilities. Maybe that is because I view movement as a series of functional solutions to game specific problems. Or maybe it's because I am familiar with and almost strive for the that uncomfortable feeling of learning something new, of recalibrating to achieve something new.
From the sidelines, I can see the movement patterns but I am acutely aware of my novice status when I pick up something new and I am reflexive enough not to delude myself that I would be outstanding in competition!
I may be able to pick up the movement patterns in isolation after some mimicry and repetition, but that certainly does not improve my affordance capabilities (or lack thereof) in a game I have never seen before. Not only would I be overwhelmed by the number of game-related problems I am suddenly faced with, I would also be a very classical case of "you don't know what you don't know". How on earth could I couple my perceptions with my actions if I don't even know what my action-specifying information sources are, where they come from, when to actively search for them, and what to do with them.
I think this is a case of conflating my knowledge about the environment as knowledge of. And as it turns out, that's quite easy to do! It is no surprise that this often happens in coaching, or is at least revered in coaches who are able to physically perform an action and are then tasked with its instruction. I may have the awareness to know the difference, but in that moment, it is very easy to forget.
That is not to say that I should let this realisation stop me from ever exploring or experiencing hockey, and I think that is a very powerful perspective to have.
I have spent the majority of my skill development journey in and around cricket. If you count my very first exposure to my most recent one, I have already clocked 20 years in the game. It would be completely understandable if I felt that the skills I’ve developed in that domain are too specific to transfer, that beyond the white picket fence, I would be starting anew in every other sport.
But I’ve never seen it that way. I think my predisposition to an ecological dynamics perspective of the world is to thank for that, because I’ve always seen my movements as solutions to problems I am faced with. And while those problems are sometimes very specifically cricket related, I think those moments are few and far between.
Because while I have 20 years of cricket under my belt, I have also gone out of my way to experience many other sports: football, volleyball, tennis, baseball, netball, Aussie Rules football, swimming, handball, indoor cricket and touch football.
I have never once entered those arenas, either at a social level or representative level, as if I have absolutely nothing to give, that I am starting from scratch. And despite many coaches telling me otherwise, I have never subscribed to the idea that there are competing motor patterns, and that only one should prevail in each context. There is, of course, some truth in what they’re really trying to say: you can’t quite kick a soccer ball out of your hand as a goalkeeper in the same way you would an Aussie rules ball, but that was my skill development journey to navigate.
If there is any experience that is universal across these many sports, it’s the prevalence of so-called “fundamental movement skills” that are believed only to exist within their specific domain.
So how come I was the only person in my volleyball team who could comfortably serve over the net, time and time again, without any formal training? Well, the overhead interception and timing was very similar to bowling in cricket.
Why was I more than happy to spend most my football career in the goalkeepers box? Because I was so used to seeing people run at me, and I could read where the ball was going as they were kicking it. Plus, I could avoid getting in trouble for instinctually using my hands to stop the ball.
Did I ever stop to consider I was too short to be a ruckman when my teammates were injured or needed a rest? Not really, because I could always jump high enough to contest the ball, just as I could jump high enough to spike or block in volleyball (no one ever really expects it).
This is what I see in my head when I look at sport: not a repertoire of movement patterns that need to be abolished and rebuilt every time I experience something new, but a plethora of experiences and perceptions and actions that I can weave together to solve the problem in front of me.
What if we approached all skill and talent development like this?
What if every child walked away from an adolescence filled with rich, diverse experiences across any activity that piqued their interest?
What if they could follow whatever caught their attention and see where it took them, without fear of not being good enough or throwing away their ‘career’ despite still being a child?
I think we would have a world filled with problem solvers, and they would gently, respectfully revolt against the answer knowers.