Have heard some claim lately that the ecological approach is insufficient for coaching because it only focuses on motor skill acquisition and ignores other important factors like confidence, motivation, social influences, etc. Thus, mixing theories is required. Simply not true!

For example, have heard argument that at times you have to use a low variability, isolated activities (i.e. task decomposition – which we avoid in the ecological approach) b/c it promotes confidence & allows for demonstration of proficiency to ones social peers. Not the case…

As nicely documented here, the same things (e.g. confidence, competency, mastery) can be achieved using task simplification via equipment scaling (a method consistent with the ecological approach) instead of task decomposition https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/65535/Davies_Perceptions_2018.pdf https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-015-0452-2

Any in coming weeks on the podcast (and associated journal clubs) I hope to show that there is way more to the ecological approach than just movement coordination -- touching on things like “form of life”, social-cultural constraints, skilled intentionality and a lot more

As I have tried to emphasize before, following an ecological approach doesn't significantly reduce the size of the "coaching toolbox" it just promotes using the tools in different ways