The Advanced Ecological Approach to Skill Development : Get More Out of the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) to Coaching

by Rob Gray

Have you experienced the change in perspective that comes from viewing skill as a functional, adaptive relationship between the athlete and their environment? Discovered the value of shifting a coach’s role from giving solutions to giving problems? Does the Ecological Approach to skill and coaching resonate with your personal beliefs and align with the experiential knowledge you have gained through your coaching? Have you seen some initial success from using methods such as the Constraints Led Approach (CLA) and/or Differential Learning? Want to take it further?
This book builds on the foundational concepts discussed in the author's best-selling books, “How We Learn to Move”, “Learning to Optimize Movement”, and “How to be an Ecological Coach” by introducing a few new concepts (e.g., Coordination Dynamics, the Inertia Tensor) and building on one’s you may already know (e.g., Variability of Practice, Education of Attention and Representative Design). It clarifies concepts such as “coaching to invariants” and “skill maintenance”. It introduces new ways of looking at talent identification, tracking an athlete’s progress, designing warm-up sessions, using analytics to support practice design, and managing sport injuries. Time to advance the ball up the field!

388 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 23, 2025