AAA Player Development

Today we briefly unveil our key principles/framework that inform and guide what we do in supporting people to create world-leading player development environments, and specifically shooting expertise.

Whilst we feel this is important and can be a practical and powerful guide, at the same time there is a risk of contributing to a trend in skill acquisition, player development and coaching where words and terms are spoken about but not able to be actioned - “talking the talk but not walking the walk”. This is increasingly common in the internet age and we hope to help bridge that gap.

Also, for any company or organisation offering technology apps/platforms such as we do, we feel it is important that the development and implementation of the technology is informed and emerges from the wisdom of those with significant experience in sport, and particularly the practical application of contemporary perspectives in skill acquisition, player/talent development and coaching. Increasingly we see this is not the case, and through clever marketing ploys that tap into powerful narratives (primarily around “objective” data), many players, coaches, teams and organisations are being lured down a blind alley. With a unique blend of practical, theoretical and technological knowledge and experience acquired over 25 years, we are in a fortunate position to help reverse this trend.

Below are our 3 key principles which we believe contribute to creating a “AAA” player development environment, and therefore act as both a mark of quality and guide for achieving such quality.

• Adaptability - practice is designed to have players adapt in a number of different ways (technically, tactically, positionally, emotionally). Adaptive expertise is the ultimate goal
• Autonomy - autonomy-supportive approaches encourage and guide players to use their initiative and proactively eXPerience, eXPlore and eXPeriment
• Affect - players should feel a strong connection (resonance) with the environment through joy, (safe) challenge and positive relationships

These principles reflect a remarkable synthesis from a lengthy exploration into what world-leading player development has, does and will look like moving forward. We hope there is an elegant simplicity to them that assists people to navigate the complexity of player development.

Keep an eye out for follow up posts that will go into the detail of each principle, and how the ShootXP app fits into the picture.

If you can’t wait and would like to discuss how to “level up” your player development environment using these principles, then please get in touch

Note: “AAA Player Development”, “AAA Development”, “AAA Environments”, “AAA Players” and similar are all licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 for individual use. For all other uses it is © ShootXP 2024

Photo by Ludo Poiré on Unsplash