{"id":31488,"date":"2025-11-04T10:28:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T10:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=31488"},"modified":"2025-12-15T10:57:35","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T10:57:35","slug":"sport-is-complex-what-does-that-mean-for-how-we-prepare-athletes","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/sport-is-complex-what-does-that-mean-for-how-we-prepare-athletes\/","title":{"rendered":"Sport Is Complex \u2013 What Does that Mean for How we Prepare Athletes?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 4 Nov 2025 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Sport Is Complex \u2013 What Does that Mean for How we Prepare Athletes?<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Coaching & Development<\/a>, Human Performance<\/a> <\/div>\n
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In the second part of a miniseries exploring complexity in sport, Everton\u2019s Head of Sport Science Jack Nayler outlines how performance emerges in complex situations and how coaches and practitioners can respond to the needs of the athlete and their environment.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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By Jack Nayler<\/h6>\n
In part one, I set out the idea of complex environments using the analogy of a car in traffic. This time around I want to bring it into a more relatable context \u2013 the game, and what I believe operating in complex environments means for how we prepare athletes.<\/h6>\n

As our metaphorical car<\/a> entered the complexity of a city, a player enters a match. All team sports are complex in nature. The degree of complexity in each sport varies depending on the number of players and the structures inherent through the laws of each game. Football is one of the most complex of team sports. Whilst it is continuous like basketball, it has more players. And although rugby and American football have as many or more players, there are fewer set plays in football, so it flows more. Couple this complexity with the low scoring and there is more uncertainty over results in football than in other sports; a factor that contributes to its global popularity.<\/p>\n

The complex nature of team sports means that the generalities of complex systems also exist within the game. The player on the ball is closest to the action so has the greatest chance to influence the game at that moment. As the ball moves, so does the influence of each player, in proximity to the ball.<\/p>\n

The future is also uncertain. Once the referee has blown the whistle to start the match, we have no idea what will happen next or even how long exactly the game will last.<\/p>\n

Team sports: a microcosm of life<\/strong><\/p>\n

Team sports are all extremely popular as their complexity creates a microcosm of life. The tactical, technical, physical and cognitive demands are all wrapped up together and it is difficult to break them down into discrete buckets. The performance of each individual player will emerge from the interaction of all these components.<\/p>\n

Remember that complexity is fractal, so whilst the performance of each player on the team will emerge from the interactions of these four components, the performance of the team will emerge from the interactions between each player, and the outcome of the match will emerge from the interactions between the teams, the fans, officials, weather etc.<\/p>\n

This has implications for how we prepare our teams to perform. Once a player sets foot on the field of play, our ability to influence the outcome as coaching and support staff diminishes. We need to provide our players with the skillset to deal with whatever emerges in the game. Because the game is constantly evolving in real time, our players need to be able to make sense of what is happening in front of them and find solutions to the puzzles presented within the game.<\/p>\n

Remember that the more we try to control a complex system and add safety, the more we can leave ourselves open to bigger problems. Coaches of all levels appreciate this. If all training consisted of each week was the starting line-up vs an opposition with the coach dictating 90 minutes of match play pass-by-pass, the team would very quickly come unstuck in the game at the weekend.<\/p>\n

Nassim Taleb talks of Fragility, Robustness and Antifragility (1). Whilst the robust team is able to repel the challenge posed by another team, an anti-fragile team will have the toolkit to assess their opponent in real-time and exploit their weaknesses.<\/p>\n

This is one of the reasons why we now recognise the power of games-based approaches in skill acquisition and developing fitness (2, 3, 4). I have seen through in-house research over the years the more beneficial hormonal response of games and competition for adaptation in players.<\/p>\n

This does not mean that there isn\u2019t space for isolated physical and skill-based training in sport. Developing running technique can positively alter factors associated with increased injury risk (5) and High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has a beneficial effect on a variety of underpinning physical performance factors in football (6). These are key pieces of the performance puzzle. The art comes in how and when they are deployed as well as how they are blended together effectively with the technical and tactical training, to greatest effect.<\/p>\n

Raising a player\u2019s ceiling<\/strong><\/p>\n

What we need is a variety of complementary practice spaces to allow players (as individual complex entities) to develop capabilities themselves before then applying them in context.<\/p>\n

In complex environments, we want to try and expand the ceiling of a player\u2019s capabilities, so as the vast majority of the fluctuations in the system (the game) come within their physical limits. Hamstrings are the most injured area of the body in football, and most hamstring injuries occur during sprinting. It would be tempting therefore to try to reduce risk by minimising the exposure a player has to sprinting. However, as soon as the game demands that the player sprints, their risk is much greater as we haven\u2019t prepared them properly to do that. We believe now that regular sprinting exposure (appropriately placed in the training week) will confer protection from hamstring injuries (7).<\/p>\n

As discussed, an individual player is their own complex system. Their performance will emerge from the interaction of their technical, tactical, physical and cognitive capabilities, which are all intertwined. We need to treat each player within our squad as an individual and design their training programme accordingly. \u00a0This should develop their capabilities in line with the demands that will be placed upon them by the playing style\/game model and the competition, whilst considering their own personal history (injuries, training age, maturation status etc).<\/p>\n

The on-field training should then reflect the game model, and competition demands sufficiently to allow the player to apply, develop and exhibit these physical capabilities in context of, and interwoven with, the cognitive, technical and tactical demands. Again, through research conducted in-house, I have seen the importance of training at match intensity during the week for reducing risk of injury and increasing performance; come the weekend and the research shows that maintaining higher chronic loading will help to reduce injury risk (8).<\/p>\n

The growing appreciation of these factors have led to moves away from more traditional periodisation models first developed in individual Olympic sports where physical qualities were trained in an isolated but sequential manner. The rise of Tactical Periodisation models (9) has attempted to address team preparation holistically during the on-field training itself. Different constraints are placed upon the design of the practice on a day-by-day and week-to-week basis that provide affordances for technical, tactical, psychological and physical attributes to be overloaded on any given day.<\/p>\n

When sports science and performance blur together<\/strong><\/p>\n

The support staff around the players need to understand this process and the underlying motivation for it each day from the coaching staff. Physical preparation, therapeutic work, psychological skills training all need to be complementary to this process and not detrimental.<\/p>\n

As each player is their own complex system, they are themselves closest to the action. No one should know the player\u2019s body and how it feels better than them, though admittedly this takes time to learn as a professional athlete.<\/p>\n

I believe that a player-involved<\/em> as opposed to player-centred approach is vital in developing this knowledge. Although the difference is subtle, it is an important distinction to make. In a player-centred model, the team of practitioners, ologists and experts discuss the player and develop a plan, drawing on all their expertise. A player-involved model brings the player into that process, involving them in the decision making and design of their training. The player needs respecting as a key member of the interdisciplinary team. Not only will this help to develop the player\u2019s understanding of their body and the training process, but also their investment and trust in the programme. This is key in a sport such as football where the link between doing physical work and performance isn\u2019t always immediately obvious and the talent pool is global; from different cultures and backgrounds.<\/p>\n

The whole programme therefore needs careful management in a trans-disciplinary manner. When sports science first entered football around 30 years ago it was perceived as a standalone service where players spent time separately to the coaching team. This then developed into larger multidisciplinary teams of practitioners working within their field of expertise, but they were still often siloed. The rise of the Head of Performance brought distinct disciplines together to form interdisciplinary teams operating in a more integrated manner.<\/p>\n

These lines are now blurring further. Technology has allowed S&C coaches to do many of the things that were previously the domain of the sports scientist (e.g. analysing jump tests). The rehabilitation process starts with the doctor or physio but ends with technical coaches delivering elements. Analysts and sports scientists co-create drills that match the technical, tactical and physical demands for a player completing some additional conditioning work.<\/p>\n

What needs placing around a complex system, as a way of helping to manage and steer it in the direction we need, is a framework that guides those within the system in their decision making.<\/p>\n

Psychology is a case in point.\u00a0 There is a clear need for performance psychology to help develop the toolkit of capabilities that players have at their disposal, and the wider training should help to develop and test these capabilities in a realistic manner. However, everyone in the organisation has a brain between their ears and is interacting with one another so is, to a greater or lesser extent, doing psychology in some way. A framework, or Psychologically Informed Environment (PIE) is essential to ensure that as far as possible all the interactions happening within an organisation are in service of the performance (and I would consider wellbeing intrinsic to performance) and not detrimental to it.<\/p>\n

So, we return to the fractal nature of complexity and the different scales at which complexity exists. The sporting organisation itself is a complex entity and each person within it will exert different levels of control at different times.<\/p>\n

This has implications for the way that we lead these environments, and this is what I want to delve into in the third and fourth parts of this series.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n