This book expands on the ‘Developing Thinking Players’ model across a wide range of team and individual sports, to explain how coaches can help athletes to learn how to make better decisions during play and to think for themselves. It provides an overview of game-centred and athlete-centred approaches to teaching and coaching in sport, combining essential theory with practical tips and guidance. Written by an international team of coaching researchers and practising coaches, the book provides sport-specific instructions for coaching players in territory games, net games, striking games, target games, racquet games and combat sports, including netball, basketball, ice hockey, cricket, softball, football, rugby, volleyball, squash and karate. The book argues that the implementation of these student and athlete-centred approaches creates more opportunities for athletes to understand their sport and improves their ability to think for themselves and to learn to make better in-game decisions. Providing a theoretical underpinning for teaching tactical decision-making, it considers the development of players at all levels and age groups, from youth athletes to elite level. Thirteen sport-specific case studies offer real-world coaching insights. This is essential reading for any student, researcher or practising teacher or coach working in sport, physical education and coach education.

The ability to anticipate and make accurate decisions in a timely manner is fundamental to high-level performance in sport. This is the first book to identify the underlying science behind anticipation and decision making in sport, enhancing our scientific understanding of these phenomena and helping practitioners to develop interventions to facilitate the more rapid acquisition of the perceptual-cognitive skills that underpin these judgements. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach — encompassing research from psychology, biomechanics, neuroscience, physiology, computing science, and performance analysis — the book is divided into three sections. The first section provides a comprehensive analysis of the processes and mechanisms underpinning anticipation and skilled perception in sport. In the second section, the focus shifts towards exploring the science of decision making in sport. The final section is more applied, outlining how the key skills that impact on anticipation and decision making may be facilitated through various training interventions. With chapters written by leading experts from a vast range of countries and continents, no other book offers such a synthesis of the historical development of the field, contemporary research, and future areas for investigation in anticipation and decision making in sport. This is a fascinating and important text for students and researchers in sport psychology, skill acquisition, expert performance, motor learning, motor behaviour, and coaching science, as well as practicing coaches from any sport.

Creativity is an essential component of sport performance. The player who can make decisions that are both unexpected – and therefore less easily predicted by his/her opponent – and appropriate is the player who is likely to be successful. In this ground-breaking new book Daniel Memmert explores the concept of tactical creativity, introducing a new theoretical framework based on extensive empirical research. He argues for the importance of encouraging divergent thinking abilities at an early age, and explains how tactical creativity sits alongside conventional approaches to 'teaching games for understanding'. The book outlines essential rules for environmental and training conditions, and suggests a wide range of game forms for teaching and coaching tactical creativity to children and young people. This is important to all students, researchers, coaches and teachers working in physical education, sports coaching, sport psychology or skill acquisition.

Developing Thinking Players Baseball/Softball edition What is the best play for the fielding with a runner on three and one down? Does this change if the fielding team is up by five runs in the bottom of the last innings as opposed to being ahead by one in the third? With a left-handed batter should the fielding team shift, if so how far? Where should the batting team be hitting? Is a bunt a good idea? What factors would alter this decision? Baseball and softball both require a deep understanding of the game and how contextual factors impact on tactics to play well. When players have developed this deeper understanding it brings an extra dimension to their play. We all know of players who have a real feel for the game, who understand it in ways that lead to them making good decisions and making the great plays at crucial times. But how do they develop this understanding? Are they born with a special level of interest that leads to them becoming "students of the game" or is this understanding developed through good coaching and game experience? The Developing Thinking Players (DTP) approach is based on the strong belief that appropriate coaching/teaching will lead to every player becoming a smarter player. It uses game based scenarios, played out in real game situations, to help players to develop their understanding of the game and to learn to make good decisions. DTP is based on the following six principles If players are to become good decision makers they need to practice making decisions in realistic contexts. For players to learn at a deeper level they must be practically involved in the coaching/learning process. The motivation to learn physical skills is enhanced when players understand why they are important within the game context. Competition is a strong motivator for players and it is important in the training phase to help replicate the competitive pressure faced in games. The role of the coach is of paramount importance. A positive team culture is important. The book presents twenty-five different scenarios. Each scenario has the innings, score, batters out and the runners on base detailed. For each scenario three outcomes, ranked from a three pointer for the best through to one point for the less favoured, are supplied for both the batting and fielding team. Once the scenario is shown to the players they are asked to work out the tactics that will give them the best opportunity to score their team the maximum points while restricting the oppositions scoring. Then the scenario is played out as in a real game and points awarded. While there are a number of ways of running the programme the most common is to allow the players' time to discuss what happened and whether they need to modify their tactics before repeating the scenario. The DTP programme is designed with a great deal of flexibility. This allows it to be implemented successfully by teaches and coaches of all levels of experience and knowledge. Coaches can develop their own scenarios and points tables and add any other relevant contextual factors that they feel may impact on the decision-making. DTP is a player centred approach designed to allow the players to get involved with their learning. It supplies an opportunity for coaches and teachers to stimulate interest and generate authentic learning for their players. As such it is a valuable additional resource for all coaches and teachers of physical education Note: All scenarios have a QR code which allows them to be uploaded quickly onto a smart phone or iPad. This allows for easy access during practice. Each scenario has an attached coaching/teaching page that explains the scenario in more detail. It also has space for notes to be taken for future discussion on the tactical decisions made, and to list skills that have been identified during the scenario as needing to be improved.

Aimed at coaches, PE teachers and professionals working with athletes, this text introduces sport science topics to coaches, as well as how these concepts can be applied to enhance sports performance.

In this book, you'll learn how to use Tactical Periodization to train your players at the correct intensity for each day of the week, making sure they are always prepared tactically, mentally and physically for competitive matches. Your players (and team) will react quicker, be sharper, and make better decisions in all tactical situations.