Embodied Perception and CLA

Happy Sunday, Coach.

Welcome back to FCL’s Coaches Corner. Our quote of the day is…

Let’s rock,

Matt Dunn & Deemer Class

(Missed the last Coaches Corner? Catch up here.) 

Today’s Quick Links for Coaches:

• 🔒️ Defensive Coaching Clinic: The Approach Women’s (Link)

• 🎧 FCL Podcast: What We Learned After Interviewing The Game's Greatest Coaches (Link)

• 🧠 Some Outside Inspiration: Toughness: Developing True Strength On and Off the Court by Jay Bilas (Link)

• 🔥 A Webinar Freebie: Mirror A & D 1v1s with Dana Dobbie (Link)

🤓 The Principles Office
Embodied perception is more than discipline

Welcome back to the Principles Office. Today’s topic on embodied perception is inspired by a book on skill acquisition by Rob Gray, How We Learn To Move.

I/ Everything starts with perception

Perception is the process of becoming aware of something through our senses. How an athlete perceives their environment directly shapes how they choose to act.

The best players in any sport are elite at perceiving their environment and the opportunities it affords them.

This could be Lionel Messi scanning the pitch. Tom Brady picking apart a coverage. Jeff Teat feeding a back door cut. Chloe Humphrey knowing when to attack vs pass. These players aren’t just skilled. They consistently notice the right things, at the right time.

This is usually what we mean by “feel for the game” or “athletic IQ.” Often, it has less to do with raw athleticism and more to do with how effectively someone reads and manipulates the environment.

That’s why coaches emphasize eye discipline so heavily. “Head on a swivel”, “eyes on hips”, “eyes up on the dodge”. We intuitively know that what an athlete sees matters.

I remember youth basketball practices where we dribbled while the coach (my dad) held up numbers we had to call out. The point wasn’t only ball-handling, it was training our eyes to perceive while ball-handling.

As a coach, I now see this everywhere through film, drills, meetings. We’re constantly trying to help athletes see what we see.

And when they don’t, it’s frustrating. “How did you not see that? We practiced it all week.”

II/ Perception problems - we’re seeing it all wrong

Most of us were taught to think about perception like a camera. It captures what's out there objectively, sends that information to the brain, which then decides what to do.

As coaches, we see this view all the time. We show film to help players see what we see. We run drills to improve their reads. We give verbal cues to direct their attention to the right information.

But perception isn't objective.

Two players standing in the same spot can see completely different things. Steph Curry and Shaquille O’Neal at the top of the key perceive entirely different opportunities. Same environment, but two very different realities.

The difference is capacity to act, not intelligence.

Perception isn’t just about what information is available. It’s about what the athlete can do with that information. In a chaotic game environment, we can’t separate what an athlete sees from what they’re capable of executing. They see opportunities to execute (ie, affordances).

The camera model doesn't account for this. It assumes perception is input that the brain processes, but that's not how it works in real environments. What you can do shapes what you can see.

III/ Perception is embodied

A phenomenal book to better understand these mechanics and how to train them is How We Learn to Move, by Rob Gray. In the book, Gray discusses a concept called embodied perception which states that:

This implies that the information we detect is impacted by our ability to act on it.

This makes sense if you think about some classic sports analogies. It's the baseball player who says the pitch looked like a beach ball or a basketball player who states the hoop looks massive that day. Their action capacity has changed what’s perceptually available.

Goalkeeper Study (this is awesome)
Gray gives a clear example from soccer goalkeeping (study by Matt Dicks and colleagues). 

Keepers with quicker movement times consistently waited longer before starting their dive. Their action capacity gave them the ability to delay.

This means that goalies with quicker movements could be more patient, and thus, read the shot better. Goalies with slower movement times couldn’t and had to guess. Slower keepers couldn't wait because the affordance to delay didn't exist for them. Their movement constraints shaped their perception of the situation.

IV/ What this looks like on the field

A defender without the capacity to move laterally at speed will always turn their hips early. This leaves them more vulnerable to getting beat.

Athletes with greater physical capacities literally perceive more opportunities. It's not just that they execute better. They see options that others don't, because those options are actually available to them.

So when an athlete isn't seeing on the field what you're seeing in film, it might not be a focus issue or IQ problem. They're not perceiving it because they can't act on it. They don’t perceive that affordance in the flow of action. 

Think of a player that does not feed it to the back pipe when dodging to their off-hand. Yes, the player was “open”, but because they do not have the capacity to throw an accurate pass through the defense with their off-hand, they do not even see that as a realistic option.

This changes how we train and think about perception. We can't just train the eyes. We have to train the action capabilities that unlock what the eyes can see.

V/ Rethinking how we train perception

If perception is shaped by action capacity, then we need to rethink how we develop "game IQ." Here are a few ideas.

#1 Stop training perception in isolation. Film sessions and whiteboard talks have their place, but they can't create perception that isn't supported by physical capability. You can't think your way into seeing options you can't execute.

#2 Train the body to expand what the brain can see. Want your players to see backdoor cuts? They need the off-hand passing capacity to make that throw in a game environment. Want defenders to stay patient? They need the lateral movement speed that makes patience possible.

#3 Use constraints, not commands. Instead of telling a player "see the backside feed," create practice scenarios that reward it when they have the capacity. Let their perception develop naturally as their action capacity grows.

The best coaches reverse-engineer drills to produce desired behaviors in games.

#4 Be patient with the process. Perception doesn't change overnight because it's tied to movement patterns that take time to develop. When a player "doesn't see it," remember they might literally not be able to yet.

Note: one thing that makes coaching so special is there is no one size fits all approach. The information here is meant to serve as tools that you as a coach can utilize as you see fit.

VI/ Closing the loop

When I read this book a few years ago it really helped make sense of some concepts I was struggling with as a coach.

If you're like us, you're always working through better understanding these concepts yourself. You've likely tried to dive into some CLA resources and are working to weave it into a realistic style of coaching that works.

We love hearing from our subscribers and fellow coaches, if you have any thoughts or experiences you’d like to share with us let us know. That helps to drive the content we focus on in these emails.

Until Next Time

Thanks for taking a trip down the hallway. If you are looking for a deeper dive, we have posted numerous videos on our Instagram, Twitter and YouTube channels on this topic.

Stay tuned for more content all spring and email us at [email protected] with any questions and let us know your thoughts.

🔒 Defensive Coaching Clinic: The Approach
FCL Defense Coach Clinic — WOMEN’S NEW

🚨 Webinar Freebie 🚨

This week’s freebie is from our webinar with Loyola University Maryland Assistant Coach Dana Dobbie. Coach Dobbie delivered a webinar on handling the return to play procedure when an athlete gets injured.

It is an extremely insightful webinar where Coach Dobbie talks about the mental health aspects of an injury, as well as what you can do as a lacrosse coach to help your athletes prepare for re-entering practice. We wanted to highlight a drill that falls in the early stages of returning to contact.

🎙️ FCL PODCAST & COACH COMMUNITY

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🚀 Online Community

For coaches who want to level up, the FCL Coach Community is the best resource on the market for men’s and women’s coaching staffs looking to continue developing.

It includes over 40 college coach webinars, 150+ drills for offense, defense, and full-team compete, as well as sessions focused on schemes and strategies.

• 🔦 COMMUNITY TOUR: Watch Community Tour Here.