ABSTRACT
A key factor in understanding the emergence of skilled behaviour in sport concerns the role of the coach in structuring task constraints and organizing practice environments (for a review, see Schmidt and Lee, 1999). Perhaps the most significant task constraints include the nature of the equipment used by learners during practice and the structure and organization of activities that coaches use to simulate strategic sub-phases of sports, such as attacking or defending in team ball games. From a dynamical systems theoretical standpoint, contemporary work on motor behaviour in sport has been influenced by concepts such as self-organization, constraints, emergence, variability and stability of motor patterns in developing and learning movement systems (see Davids et al., 2002; Handford et al., 1997; Kelso, 1995). Dynamical systems are complex, highly interconnected systems that are capable of acquiring rich patterns of behaviour due to the potential for interaction between system components.
