Working with “rate limiters” in our coaching

Rob Gray did a podcast episode in which he talked about a paper titled Applying the constraints-led approach to facilitate exploratory learning of the volleyball serve. The focus of the research done for the paper is the Tennis Serve concept I’ve written about before. That’s where you allow a re-serve if a players misses their attempt.

This research is presented within the Constraints Led Approach (CLA) framework (give Rob’s first book a read to learn more on the subject). That might sound a bit incongruous. After all, allowing a second serve doesn’t sound constraining.

In this instance, however, it’s about removing a constraint. The fact that missing a serve means you don’t get another opportunity is described as a “rate limiter”. Allowing the second serve lifts that limiter – at least until it’s time to make a second serve.

The authors’ expressed aim for this research was “…to examine whether the addition of the task constraint of a second serve would encourage volleyball players to use their first serve to explore their action capabilities.” In other words, they wanted to see if players took more chances if they knew they’d get a second serve on a miss.

Their findings indicate – both empirically and from player comments – that’s exactly what happens. No surprise there for me. I’ve used second serves for quite a while now for exactly this reason.

Rob quite correctly notes some limitations of the research. Long-term outcomes, in particular, are a question. I think, though, that this opens the door to looking beyond serving. There are, after all, the rate limiters at every point of contact. What if, for example, we applied the same approach to hitting? Would we see attackers trying more things? I suspect we would (see Second Chance).

And flipping that around, where could we add rate limiters to encourage or discourage certain things?

Importantly…

Rob also makes a very important point toward the end of the episode. He notes that CLA isn’t just about letting athletes do whatever until they ultimately figure it out. “Coaches know what a good serve looks like,” is his observation. Coaching under CLA is about guiding the athlete toward that through feedback and/or the use of other constraints. It’s just not about giving them the exact solution.

If you’re interested in volleyball research, here are some other posts:

You can also see more from Rob on how CLA and the Ecological Approach to skill acquisition work and relate to volleyball in the Talking skill acquisition in volleyball post.