3 Logic Traps Coaches Fall Into When Debating “Traditional” vs. “Ecological”

We love the clarity of opposites, but real learning doesn’t care about our camps. Here’s how science—and a few humbling coaching moments—changed how I see the argument.

I’ll plead guilty right away: I used to love the clean contrast. “Traditional coaches teach motor programs－and they’re wrong; ecological coaches design environments－and they are right.” It made for sharp copy and instant clarity. I can still hear the echo of typing those lines—it felt like truth boiled down to an elegant punchline.

But then I started comparing my own to other people’s writing about the topic, here on Substack, my favorite place to bounce ideas off each other’s mental pinball machines. The world seems to believe in those divides a little too much. This is Instagram behavior. Every post I consumed came back with harder edges: we are enlightened; they are outdated. I saw how seductive that language is—and how it shuts down learning. It forced me to examine my own hyperbole. The world of skill learning isn’t black and white; it’s mostly gradients and feedback loops.

So let’s unpack that old contrast, but this time with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer.

Image Credit: R. Götz

---

3 Key Takeaways:

• Clarity can deceive. The sharper a contrast sounds—like “motor programs vs. adaptation”—the more likely it hides the complexity of how people actually learn.

• Arguments deserve dissection, not allegiance. Instead of picking sides, test each claim against evidence: what holds up under logic, and what collapses when context changes?

• Precision is more persuasive than polarity. Writers and coaches gain credibility not by declaring who’s right, but by showing how both preparation and adaptation coexist in real performance.

---

2 Thought-Provoking Questions:

1. Which of your current coaching beliefs might look too “clean” once you examine the evidence beneath them?

2. When you read or write about learning, do you aim to persuade—or to understand?

---

The tidy myth

Grey literature writers like me once described traditional coaching as if athletes stored a “perfect motor program” and simply retrieved it, like opening a file and running its instructions. The coach’s job was to polish that file through blocked drills, precise cues, and correction until it ran smoothly, according to some ideal image of perfect movement.

Then came the ecological counterstrike: athletes don’t store files; they adapt in real time. Perception and action are one continuous dance. Instead of instructions, we should give them environments—game-like setups with realistic constraints—so they can discover movement solutions themselves.

Thats Trap 1 —The False Dichotomy Trap
Both stories contain truth. Both oversimplify.

What survives logic scrutiny

Preparation exists. In motor control research, reaction time scales with movement complexity (Henry & Rogers, 1960), and startling a player can trigger a prepared response (Valls-Solé et al., 1999). The nervous system can preload a plan—it’s not blank.

Prediction exists. People adapt to distorted visual or force environments (Shadmehr & Mussa-Ivaldi, 1994), showing that we build internal models. Mental rehearsal works because we simulate ahead of action.

But then again…

Coupling exists. Bernstein’s famous “repetition without repetition” (1967) shows skilled performers achieving stable outcomes with variable movements. Gibson’s theory of affordances (1979) tells us perception guides action in context, not in isolation. Todorov and Jordan (2002) demonstrated that movement control corrects only where it matters—continuous adaptation, not replay.

That’s Trap 2 — The Evidence Skimming Trap
The truth: people use both preparation and online adaptation. One without the other is fantasy.

🙋‍♂️ If something I made helped you in any way, however small, I’d love to hear what changed or what you built with it. That reflection is what keeps this work breathing.

What that looks like in flag football

Take a receiver. In my early coaching days, I’d run endless route-running drills on air. The players looked sharp, smooth, rhythmic—textbook movement—after I corrected them time and again. Then came game day, and that same receiver froze when the defensive back shaded outside-leverage against their preplanned out route.

That’s when I started designing what I now call representative reads. The defender calls leverage (“in” or “out”) at 7 meters. The receiver adjusts the break accordingly; the quarterback reads and throws on rhythm. The goal isn’t elegance—it’s adaptability.

Metrics tell the story:

• SEC % (Separation at Catch)—the rate of catches made with more than 1 meter of space between receiver and defender.

• OTD % (On-Target Drops)—passes that hit the hands but are still missed.

If SEC % rises and OTD % falls while movement patterns keep changing, we’ve built a robust policy, not a brittle trace.

That’s Trap 3 — The Aesthetic Illusion Trap
I used to judge success by how “clean” drills looked. Now I watch how players self-organize when leverage flips, when a rusher speeds up time effectively, when timing collapses. That’s learning.

A better frame

Here’s how I now phrase what once was a wedge issue:

Players don’t rely on retrieving a perfect movement “program.” They learn adaptable control policies and synergies that are prepared in advance and tuned moment-to-moment to the information available. Perception and action are distinct processes working in a tightly coupled loop to serve the same function.

It keeps the ecological spirit but acknowledges the nervous system’s architecture. It honors both sides without caricature.

Why this matters for coach educators

Coaches crave clarity, not camps. Absolutism feels strong but breaks under complexity. My job—our job—is to protect nuance from extremism. These days, this is even a political mission!

Practical takeaways still fit on a single whiteboard:

• Anchor tasks to game-relevant information (opponents, timing, space).

• Keep the goal stable, vary the path.

• Allow brief planning, then inject interference.

• Cue external outcomes (“through the 2 m gate”) instead of body parts.

• Evaluate transfer with SEC %, OTD %, and adaptability under pressure.

If practice looks messier but performance holds under uncertain conditions, you’re doing it right.

---

Writing and reading on Substack was the best correction I’ve ever received. It reminded me that teaching and writing are the same act: we’re shaping environments for others to discover meaning, not delivering a final truth.

So yes, I once wrote in contrasts, and I will use that style again. I still love clarity. But I’ve learned to find it inside the grey.

---

🌀 What’s the first idea this unlocked for you? Leave it in the comments, please, or send me a quick message. I don’t want what I publish to vanish into the void.

Rolf is a non-linear pedagogy advocate, author, and coach developer from Germany. He writes about humane coaching, purposeful change, and the road toward dreams worth chasing.

If his work resonates, why not walk a stretch of the road with him?

📌 PS: If you found this post helpful, would you please consider restacking it and sharing it with your audience? This post is public, so feel free to share and forward it.

My Payhip Store
Buy me a coffee, pls
LinkedIn
Instagram
Email: info@flag-academy.com
Email: rolf@beyondchampionships.eu
Facebook: Coaching Beyond Championships

References

“In summary, the evidence from the referenced articles robustly supports a cohesive picture: skilled motor behavior emerges from flexible, adaptive coordination guided by internal predictive models and continuous perceptual feedback within an ecological perception-action framework. Movement planning involves advance preparation and possible preplanned components, while execution relies on optimization over time and context, leveraging variability and multiple reference frames to achieve goal-directed performance in uncertain environments.” ~ scite_

• Bernstein, N. A. (1967). The Coordination and Regulation of Movements.

  Bernstein introduced the idea that skilled performance involves “repetition without repetition”—achieving consistent outcomes through variable movements. His work laid the foundation for viewing coordination as a process of self-organization rather than fixed sequencing.

• Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception.

  Gibson argued that perception is inherently tied to action: we perceive the environment in terms of its affordances—possibilities for movement and interaction. Though primarily about vision, his ideas underpin the ecological view that learning depends on information picked up through acting in real contexts.

• Henry, F. M., & Rogers, D. E. (1960). “Increased Response Latency for Complicated Movements.” Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60(6), 505–511.

  Their “memory drum” experiment showed that reaction time grows with movement complexity, implying that part of the movement is pre-organized before initiation—evidence that some motor programming exists.

• Valls-Solé, J., Rothwell, J. C., Goulart, F., Cossu, G., & Muñoz, E. (1999). “Patterned Ballistic Movements Triggered by a Startle in Healthy Humans.” Journal of Physiology, 516(3), 931–938.

  Demonstrated that a startling sound can involuntarily release a pre-planned movement, showing that the nervous system can preload and hold motor commands ready to fire—supporting the idea of advance preparation.

• Shadmehr, R., & Mussa-Ivaldi, F. A. (1994). “Adaptive Representation of Dynamics During Learning of a Motor Task.” Journal of Neuroscience, 14(5 Pt 2), 3208–3224.

  Participants adapted to novel force fields by building internal models of the environment’s dynamics. This remains a cornerstone finding for the “predictive” or “model-based” side of motor learning.

• Todorov, E., & Jordan, M. I. (2002). “Optimal Feedback Control as a Theory of Motor Coordination.” Nature Neuroscience, 5(11), 1226–1235.

  Proposed that the brain achieves goals through continuous feedback optimization, not pre-programmed sequences—variability is permitted where it doesn’t harm the goal. This model unites preparation and adaptation in a single control framework.