Staff Profiles

Modules taught

Danny leads the following modules:

u76140 - Coaching Practice to Theory 2

u76173 - Advanced Coaching Practice

u76112 - Human Movement and Skill in Sport

Research projects

Danny is involved in an exciting primary school PE project. Analysing the impact of a play-based curriculum on the development of childresn physical literacy.

www.boingkids.co.uk

Further information

Journal articles

• Renshaw I, Davids, K, Araujo D, Lucas A, Roberts W, Newcombe D, Franks B, 'Evaluating Weaknesses of Cognitive Perceptual Training and Brain Training Methods in Sport: An Ecological Dynamics Critique '
  Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2019)
  ISSN: 1664-1078
  Abstract

  The recent upsurge in “brain training and perceptual-cognitive training,” proposing to improve isolated processes, such as brain function, visual perception, and decision-making, has created significant interest in elite sports practitioners, seeking to create an “edge” for athletes. The claims of these related “performance-enhancing industries” can be considered together as part of a process training approach proposing enhanced cognitive and perceptual skills and brain capacity to support performance in everyday life activities, including sport. For example, the “process training industry” promotes the idea that playing games not only makes you a better player but also makes you smarter, more alert, and a faster learner. In this position paper, we critically evaluate the effectiveness of both types of process training programmes in generalizing transfer to sport performance. These issues are addressed in three stages. First, we evaluate empirical evidence in support of perceptual-cognitive process training and its application to enhancing sport performance. Second, we critically review putative modularized mechanisms underpinning this kind of training, addressing limitations and subsequent problems. Specifically, we consider merits of this highly specific form of training, which focuses on training of isolated processes such as cognitive processes (attention, memory, thinking) and visual perception processes, separately from performance behaviors and actions. We conclude that these approaches may, at best, provide some “general transfer” of underlying processes to specific sport environments, but lack “specificity of transfer” to contextualize actual performance behaviors. A major weakness of process training methods is their focus on enhancing the performance in body “modules” (e.g., eye, brain, memory, anticipatory sub-systems). What is lacking is evidence on how these isolated components are modified and subsequently interact with other process “modules,” which are considered to underlie sport performance. Finally, we propose how an ecological dynamics approach, aligned with an embodied framework of cognition undermines the rationale that modularized processes can enhance performance in competitive sport. An ecological dynamics perspective proposes that the body is a complex adaptive system, interacting with performance environments in a functionally integrated manner, emphasizing that the inter-relation between motor processes, cognitive and perceptual functions, and the constraints of a sport task is best understood at the performer-environment scale of analysis.
  

  Website 

Other publications

• Franks B, Newcombe D, Roberts WM, Jakeman J, 'Shhh… We're talking about the Quiet Eye! A Perceptual Approach to the Transfer of Skill: Quiet Eye as an Insight into Perception-Action Coupling in Elite Football'
  (2017) Abstract Amidst the continued theorising and objective epistemological approach to perceptual research
  (Michaels and Beek, 1995), there remains little clarity regarding what information athletes use to
  direct decision making in performance settings and how skill is transferred from training to performance. The role of perception-action coupling within decision-making in team sports has been discussed at great length (Vaeyens et al, 2007; Pinder et al, 2011). With scholars reaching some consensus that skilled performers are not blessed with superior visual ability, rather, their ability to locate and interpret key specifying information is what determines expertise in a particular skill (Vickers, 2006). The methodological accord has often been to recreate core, single action motor-control tasks in the hope of elucidating data to suggest a change in behaviour in any given number of constraint manipulations (Vickers, 1996; Williams, Singer and Frehlich, 2002; Vine and Wilson, 2011). However, research remains in isolation of the complexities of the real world (Vaeyens, 2007; Williams and Grant, 1999). The Quiet Eye (QE) has become increasingly popular (Vickers, 2016), it details the final fixation towards a specific location or object within 3* of visual angle or less for a minimum of 100m/s (Vickers, 2016). It is reasonable to suggest that QE describes the variable in which to examine the relationship between perception and action (Vickers, 1996; Panchuk and Vickers, 2006). A SensoMotoric Instrument – Eye Tracking Glasses (SMI-ETG) binocular system will be employed within an elite level goalkeeping context. QE data will be collected in three different practice environments and compared to QE measures taken in a representative performance simulation. The practice environment design will be informed by principles of ecological dynamics as presented in the Environment Design Framework (Newcombe et al, in press). The data will be coded to establish the relationship between increased variability and the location, onset and off set of the Quiet Eye. Effect size measures will be conducted to see the variance between the 3 training trials and the representative simulation to determine the level of fidelity, between training and performance. This key data set will allow coaches to design practices and training environments in accordance with key perceptual cues used by Goalkeepers to inform their decisions and actions. Website 

Areas of expertise

Non-linear pedagogy

Constraints-Led Approach

Application of coaching theory to practice

Human Movement and Skill Development

Consultancy

Danny is involved in a wide range of consultany with various sporting national governing bodies. The development of coaches practice, in particular their environment design and application of a constraints-led approach.

Danny is the director of teaching and learning for Boing Kids - www.boingkids.co.uk

Danny is the assistand coach for the Welsh National Hockey team. In addition he is the head coach of the Southgate mens national hockey league team.

Danny is park of the GB Hockey performance coaching group and contributes heavily to the coach development elements of GB hockey.

Press, publicity and reviews