ABSTRACT
One of the central issues for theories of motor control is to account for how humans constrain the many degrees of freedom of the motor system (i.e. independent dimensions of the body that are free to vary, such as joints and muscles) to produce relatively complex actions. Initiating actions by anticipation of their sensorial effects (or action-effects) has been forwarded as a simple and economic way to automatically constrain the limbs into organized voluntary action (Kunde et al., 2004). Dynamic ball-sports skills have naturally available external action-effects, such as ball-flight information in kicking. These actions also take place in environments that are rich in information, such as in a soccer match where the movements of opponents and other teammates serves to constrain the choice of action. The external effects of an athlete’s own actions, the external performance environment, and variables within that environment act as task constraints upon performance. We review a number of studies where we and others have examined how external action-effect information (e.g. ball trajectory) and external action-percept information (e.g. visual monitoring of other players) constrain action. Although the majority of this research has been conducted in relatively controlled, laboratory-based tasks, in order to allow isolation of critical performance features, we attempt to contextualize the findings of this research for sport. We discuss the implications of this research for coaches and practitioners, particularly those involved in invasion, net, target and field sports.
