Play, Development, & the Fitness Landscape

Evolutionary Biologist use the metaphor "fitness landscape" to represent the workings of natural selection

As coaches we can use this framework to understand development of cognitive skill/game"fitness"(fitness here is not running) 1/

Think of a landscape of hills and valleys with the valleys being low game fitness (performance) while the highest mountains represent optimal fitness. In trying to build the best overall performance you would want to go as high as possible. 2/

It also helps us understand overload and underload on the path to mastery.

Most performance paths will use the heuristic of "only up"

With this strategy the performer simply takes each step a little higher and the player goes up. 3/

This "only up" strategy works initially. As the performer moves up a mountain. An example might be U10/U11 hyper organization/ 2 touch structure. The team and player are moving up the fitness lanscape. 4/

The danger with the "only up" rule is being trapped on a sub optimal peak.

Imagine climbing what you thought was the tallest mountain only to come to the top to see Everest towering above you.

Massive resources used up

and now, the only way to go higher now is to go down. 5/

And as any mountain climber will tell you, going down is the dangerous part.

To make optimal fitness the performer needs the ability to go up and go down

Underloading is going down through the valleys and exploring, looking for a path up Everest

We need to be careful of early "only up" overload coaching that sets what we think are the correct paths

1) the path is different for each child
2) the landscape may be undulating

“the more you aim at success, the more you are going to miss it."

--Viktor Frankl

Overloading is going up: be careful the path you are on

Underloading is going down: be cognizant of the danger

Play is traveling through the valleys looking for the best path up the highest peak: explore.

Fun is the finding of shortcuts along that path: Enjoy