How to divide work and play? A clue form Linguistics—Krashen’s Hypothesis

How to divide work and play?  A clue form Linguistics—Krashen’s Hypothesis

USC Linguist Steven Krashen stumbled on to something one day when he was trying to teach a young Japanese immigrant english.  He was force feeding her, trying to teach her to speak through a step by step academic like method and it was not working.  He knew that he was doing something wrong and began to see the overall process as a dichotomy, the two phases separate and best if one happens before the other. It led to one of the seminal theories in Linguistics, Krashen’s  Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis. Krashen believes that to learn a language successfully (fluently, without accent) one must go through two phases:

Krashen’s Monitor Theory 

 (Acquisition vs. Learning)  

The learner must acquire the language before they try to learn it. Acquisition is a unconscious process, while learning a language is conscious, focused on rules

and correct form.

Sounds a lot like the perfect model of developing expert performance in soccer.  The soccer player must “acquire” through play soccer before they “learn” it through Deliberate Practice.  

1-Early “play” where learning is unconscious, invisible, autonomous—this is the Acquisition phase 

2-Later “work” that requires focus, effort and feedback—this is the deliberate Practice phase

While there has been a great deal of attention paid to the “work” side of things. there has been very little understanding of play in development.  We argue that the perfect developmental model will utilize both, at the correct times when the brain is most open. 

At the younger ages 5-13, the brain seems adverse to FOCUS and CONCENTRATION, and open to PLAY and EXPLORATION.  At these ages learning takes place best in play—unknowing, the opposite of focus, unconsciously, feeding supercharged learning right into the autonomous skill bank. 

Here in the US our youth soccer this acquisition period is not well understood and we tend to only focus on the learning. But, if it was handled correctly, would the acquisition phase contribute to the growth of a player?

Roberto Ayala is small. Maybe 5'9".  He is soft spoken and courteous. He takes in everything and pauses to speak, and in this case he was taking a very log pause.  We met at Soccer Ex in Rio. He was a dominant center back, having  captained Argentina more than Maradonna and leading them and his club team Valencia (Spain) through many great competitions.  He has always been one of my heroes for how he can bring the ball down ("Soccer Tennis")   We asked him, what was the most important time in your up bringing as a player? He said when he was 12 and he joined River Plate Academy. But wait, we asked, what about before that? What was happening when you were 7? 10? 11? “oh, I played everyday,” he said, “morning noon and night.” 

Do you think that had anything to do with your development? We asked.

"I never thought of it that way...that the free play i was doing when I was 8, 9 10, 11 was important to my development...I thought I was just better than everyone else. But it must be true, because I was playing more that the others. Still, after signing with River I still played with my friends whenever I could."

Another example from an area where we do produce expert performers (at least in Minnesota) is Hockey. In a recent interview, USA Hockey Captain and Minnesota Wild star, Zach Parise was

asked a very similar question as Roberto Ayala, “What was the most important time in your development as a hockey player?” they asked “It was when I was a sophomore at Shattuck St. Mary’s.” (a famous Minnesota Hockey school where among others Sidney Crosby also attended).

I would argue (and maybe Krashen would as well) that it was not.  Zach’s father was the former NHL player JP Parise, he grew up around hockey, JP Parise ran the program at Shattuck. His early environment was surrounded by hockey a love of that was around Zach since birth.  The most important time I would argue, was the wonderful environment set up by his father.

Interestingly, both Ayala and Parise had an amazing acquisition phase of development and neither gave it much thought.

Last  year I did a Webinar  on Free Play for the NSCAA and Dave Newbery.  I was a lot of fun to get the word out--although I think i sounded dry.  But if you don't know much about the ideas of JOTP you may find it worth the 20 minutes.

I got some great contacts from the talk, Bob Bigelow the author of "Just let the kids play." Called and we shared thoughts and ideas.  We reconnect every few months--we have never met--but there is a real kinship--we both are out there swimming against the tide.   John O'Sullivan of the 'Changing the Game project' called to talk about the role of free play and how we can simplyfy things for families.  Ernesto Diaz of the great Youth Evolution soccer podcast who asked one of the questions below asked me to be part of his podcast which was a really cool experience.  

I recommend you follow the worlk of these three leaders, they are all working toward the same cause--a better, safer and healthier future for our kids.

I received some questions and Dave asked me to put down in writing...

Q1: a recent study showed that specialization is harmful and will increase injuries. Could you please explain to everyone how free play will not negatively impact the kids? Ernesto diaz

We encourage kids to play other sports, but we emphasize “play.” While in the past, at least in the US, kids played many sports but all at the park, all unstructured.  Today, US kids are structured in everything. They “work” at 4 sports, structured hockey, structured soccer, structured baseball and basketball (plus add structured violin and piano). The question is, are In soccer, every great player has put in at least 6,000 hours of free play without exception. That’s a lot of hours, and the worry would be of repetitive use injuries. But, studies have shown that in unstructured environments, where kids are allowed to make their own decisions, there is not the high rate of repetitive use injuries. Those types of injuries tend to include two elements: 

1)A high load of  hours of deliberate coaching early; and, 2) A high amount of competitive games. Neither of these elements fits into our developmental model.

Within an “unstructured environment” the kids themselves hold the locus of control.  It’s their tempo, their physical movements, their decisions. They get to know their bodies as they get to know the game—both growing together.

By contrast, in an early specialization model, the locus of control is held by the coach, or the parent, or another outside agent.  This outside agent determines the work load, tempo, repetitions, competitions, and intensity. And while Deliberate practice works, even when it’s done very early, the question is is it safe? Does it create situations of repetitive stress? Is it healthy? And, what does it do to long term motivation?

Unstructured play is not just safe, it has an unblemished record in almost every sport, from skiing to hockey to basketball to hockey as producing the healthiest, best athletes, and the most inspirational performers.

Q2: Does culture and socio-economics impact free play in America? Antonio Superbia

Yes. In ways you may or may not suspect. There are sub-cultures in america, like the hispanic culture, that does it right early. Soccer is everywhere in these cultures with the kids playing on the side space while their uncles are playing in a local league game.  There is food and mixing and a sense of something more important than the score. The adults are modeling the behavior and the kids are playing at that behavior for hours and hours during the game, after the game and during the picnic.  These kids are learning in the absence of trying to get better which paradoxically is an important element. 

Later, when the importance deliberate practice starts to ramp up these early sub cultures can lose out by missing those important learning opportunities. But things are changing, just look at the current make up of the youth US men’s Nat’l teams and you will see a lot of hispanic names.  It’s not because they are born better soccer players, their system (culture of play) outpaces the powerful youth programs we have put together.

At the same time, from my observation, the most play illiterate kids are the more affluent suburban areas where they have the uniforms, fields and enough money to hire the best coaches who structure things as best they can.  They have very basic issues in play environments, like conflict resolution, fair play, adaptive skills, and then there’s technical 

I will tell a interesting story from my time as DOC.  We have these three nice Field turf fields with a big hill above them. It was a nice spring day and after a long, cold winter and was a great day to practice.  We had 9 teams practicing and from the hill I was observing the general organization.  Off to the side, on the corners of the fields there were different groups of kids encroaching in mini free play pick up games—they just wanted to get on the only dry fields in town.  There was a group of Somali kids over here, a group of Ethiopians over there and a group of Hmong kids, all groups were a mix of young and old, all just wanted to play.

So we had this group of structured kids, and a group of free play kids.  I thought, both are 

important, but neither idea will work alone, Was there a way of putting these two ideas together?

So, yes, we need to change the culture. We need to help organizations understand how we can do so much better, not just in soccer but in all sports. There is really no need for travel until much, much later in a child’s development, certainly Free Play is important and needs to hold a place in the curriculum. The best soccer is closest to home, kids have the right to play, have fun and grow where they live.  We need to help that happen.

Q3: How can free play be introduced in the highly structured U.S club soccer environment? 

That’s the big, big question. And that is why we have but together this model. With the NSCAA’s help we are beginning to get the word out. 

First, education is the key. It is important to understand what the real best practice is in soccer.  It’s not a U10 elite team, it’s playing everyday with friends. It’s not by traveling to distant and expensive tournaments, it’s by playing everyday. I believe that most DOC’s and soccer leadership recognize this and want to happen but worry would they lose players? Would the parents react? So education comes first. 

Next their needs to be priority given to this. Setting up a cool field beside the training complex where there is only unstructured play, or experimenting with “play” days where you have a picnic and allow the kids plenty of time for games. Lots of mixing ages, genders etc. Just having 20 minutes of “play” at the end of training is great, but not near enough.Once it is set up on a regular basis you will see the kids drive it. They will tell the parents they want to get there early 

Lastly, it needs to be given time. Not only hours per week, but also patience to let the process grow over years.  It will take time, but if there is consistency you will begin to see the older generations model for the next, and now you have something.  

Now we have made it work here, despite beliefs by many, many of my peers that is was not possible, and would not work. That kids would just develop bad habits and end up being good at nothing. Kids would not come, and if they did, they would leave.  It started slow but now we are getting 700 kids a week during the summer. It can be done!

*Keep in mind that their appears to be an initial starting point, a first free play age. Sometime between the age of 5 and 9 kids want to step out into the game.  At this point you want to give them many opportunities for free play. But it can’t be forced to early, kids developmentally may still want to hang with their parent until they are ready. It’s ok to wait until they are ready.

Q4: Does unstructured mean unsupervised, or simply supervised without detailed control? 

On the Free play/Deliberate practice continuum, we rarely get to the far reaches of each. True free play has no adult within site. We know safety is important, how does this happen? In Brazil almost all great free play spaces are the same, it’s a small sided court about 20 x 30 yards with futsal size nets, fenced and of course, benches. Benches? Why the benches? Because the the kids need to spend time watching, the techniques, the social skills, acquiring the game.  Observing is important. Also, leaders are important and every court has one.  There is an old timer, a big kid, somebody serving as leader.  This is how we do things, this is how we play.  These are the rules, this leadership model has been passed down for generations. 

In great free play cultures like Brazil they have built in systems to keep it safe, fair and pass down through modeling and observing great skills and great behavior. So at JOTP  we supervise the games like the court leaders. We are the game protectors. We pass down the rules, “this is how we do things here.” And we let them take it from there. We want to help our kids have the skills on how to lead the games when it is their time.  In many 

ways this is the first thing to learn. 

We never coach, we try not to comment on winning, losing, even skills. We focus on building leaders for future games, are they getting along, resolving disputes, showing respect.  These “soft” skills seem to be as important if not more than the technical skills developed.

Q5: How can you deal with the issue that free play/deliberate practice can be as important, if not more, than a structured practice? David Wood

It’s all important at the right time at the right level. and we need to create a balanced curriculum to create balanced kids. We need to educate leaders, parents, coaches and kids. For me, it was a matter of constantly talking to parents. Letting them know that the benefits are not immediate, not to worry about lack of passing at early ages (a reality of this kind of development).

1. Competition. This is a strength in the US. we have layers of competitive leagues, individual id programs and academies like the US  Developmental Academies and ODP. We have a place for 

2. Training. This is good and getting stronger.  There is a hunger for knowledge and I can see training programs getting stronger and stronger.  But who are we training? We are way ahead of our kids who mostly are in a Free Play stage, wanting to just mess around with friends, but we have little patience for that and instead we work on “playing like Barcelona

3. Play. This is where we can improve.  Dan Gable, the great wrestler said, “if it’s important do it everyday, if it’s not important, don’t do it at all.

We need have all kids, best to beginners, spend more time playing together. Hours and hours If parents understand this it’s healthier, it’s best practice and that kids love it, they will get on board. Coaches must be patient, they must give it time and the rewards will come. Players will change, they will drive the process, they will determine the future game.

Q6: Will it be possible to have more fun with deliberate practices than free games? Giuseppe 

If you look at true DP, the definitions according to Ericsson is that it’s “not inherently fun” and I think what he means is that it’s not inherently pleasurable. It’s the very difficult work done to improve performance. It’s 400 yard repeats of preseason conditioning, or the difficult core workouts to prevent injury—very good for the long term.  These types of difficult Deliberate Practice can be very rewarding for the mature athlete—but organically, even though there may be benefit—not best for a ten year old. 

Even though the hard, focused,  Deliberate Practice will advance kids even at early ages (this is the early specialization model --and we do it because it works, at least temporarily)  Kids at the younger ages are supercharged by play--Older, mature athletes are degenerately, because they are ready and they have spent time in the acquisition phase now supercharged by Deliberate Practice --think of the gatorade or Nike "just do it" commercials showing extreme hard work--this is now "Fun" to the mature athlete and looked at as such.

The greatest players played (free play) as kids

They worked at it (deliberate Practice) much later--usually around the age of 16 when they first come into the beginnings of maturity

Here is a quote from the greatest Basketball player of all time that sums this up:

" I didn't have a coach until I was 16. I believe in Play early, Learn Late."--Michael Jordan

Q7: How do you reach the kids that really need your intervention if they cannot get a ride to your facility? Do you put the inflatables at various parks, etc.? Douglas Bambini

This is a big problem.  We do the best we can with taking our courts to communities, and 

events. We partner with cities to use their parks and are always looking for partnerships. This summer our center will be on the light rail line, a commuter line that will connect thousands of kids to JOTP. We also car pool and this summer are using bus services to bring in kids, but we are almost at max capacity at 700 kids a week in the summer.  We are working with other organizations to promote this idea as a viable way to bering kinds back to the park.Cities, Parks and recreation departments, leaders need to understand that we can bring communities together and create healthier environments with some work. Spaces and time need to be set up for this kind of play—in all sports.  Every community should have access to a safe place to play.

Q8: How do you get the funding to enable "Free Play"? Jonathan Poitevint

We are a non profit, and can receive donations, but from the start have sought to be 

sustainable. We offer programs that people can pay for and free play.  The programs pay for the free play.  We train coaches and use what we learn at free play, like the use of different balls and different surface, to provide interesting paid programs. The young kids do very little programs, as they get older we provide more program and learning opportunities to keep with in the Free play DP balance.

I would say that right now we have a maybe a billion dollar youth soccer industry focused on the top of the pyramid, competition and training, we should be able to find ways to pay for perhaps the most important part of a child’s and a communities.I think there are municipalities, Park and Recreation departments and civic leaders that would be open to this model. There are a lot of parks and tennis courts laying empty.  This can bring them back.

Q9: Are there differences in how girls and boys experience free play? d'Alary Dalton

Yes, and it a big, big opportunity.

Nowhere, in any sport, is there any such thing as girls only free play. The ratio at JOTP center is more guys than girls. I always tell the girls that there is not many girls out there, but, I say, there are not many boys either, there are just soccer players. Girls who are introduced early have no problems and enjoy taking part in free play along side boys, this is just my observation, but girls who start at later age 13, 14 have more issues.  If they are strong players they tend to look around measuring themselves vs everyone. They compete hard, but they don’t “play.”

Pia Sundhagen was just in town and I spoke with her at length about the US Women’s team.  She flat out said they are not near technical enough. She was limited on what she could do because of players basic comfort on the ball under pressure. She had grown up playing with boys at the park, the only girl. Now coaching the Swedish Nat’l team, she agreed that free play is integral to developing better players.

We work with all our kids about inclusiveness and fair play. And while it may tougher for girls to get involved and fit in, it’s more rewarding.  Because around the world, many, boys are learning from free play, but not as many girls are involved.  It can be a tremendous advantage for girls both toward skill development and long term enjoyment.

Q10: In terms of free play, in England we have to be very careful around age groupings, especially within an affiliated club environment. How do ensure that your environment is positive, safe and within National Governing Body criteria? Sam Turner

I am not sure what the rules and guidelines are in England, but I do know that England practically invented street soccer.  All the old timers I talk to speak about the good old days of We lead every game, especially in the early days.  We had to basically teach kids one by one how to play, kids had forgotten how to play together! 

But If I could not have ‘true’ Free Play I would set up something as close as I could. I would set aside time, space, with a diversity of kids and let them play without instruction. And I would do it 

Q11: What was the book that was mentioned about getting the most from practice? Daniel Something.

The book is Daniel Goleman's “Focus.” It looks at the true essence of Deliberate Practice and how to maximize learning.  I feel that he is right on, but only at a certain age, at a certain point.  Paradoxically, if it takes FOCUS to supercharge Deliberate Practice, we feel that the opposite of focus, a scattershot, divergent, daydreaming way of thinking supercharges Free Play.

This is back up by some studies that suggest that if you are participating in Free Play to improve performance, it does not work as well—but if you are just there for fun, to be with friends, to try things, then your development will be fast tracked.  Time and time again athletes will tell you, 

“we didn’t set up cones, or were concerned about getting better, we just did it because it was fun."

Like best practice in language learning you must “acquire,” (live in and around, the absorption, the culture) before you “learn,” (the skills, rules and techniques).

Q12: Where can I buy those inflatable soccer fields? Thomas Connolly

We had them designed and built. We do sell them as ways to promote free play to clubs and organizations, they are great fun, easy to put up and take down.  They attract attention. If interested contact me at Ted@joyofthepeople.org.

Q13: You mentioned Torbert games.  Who is Torbert? Brian Kibler

Dr. Marianne Torbert identified three interrelated concepts that when applied to play activities that enhance and increase the growth and development of children.

By using different balls, keeping it safe, encouraging fair play and diversity, we can sit back and watch the kids enjoy themselves.

1) Expansion

This is anything that increases the number of potential growth experiences.In youth soccer. For example, this could be more touches of the ball, reducing the down time between activities and selecting activities that allow everyone to play.

2) Equalization

Challenges that allow each participant to be challenged and grow at their own level. This is critical, and closely relates to the Slanty Line and Flow State models. As a coach make a conscious effort to select, design, and provide training sessions that motivate each player.

3) Interactive Challenges

This is where the more skilled players help the weaker players to achieve more. This is tricky to get right, but important to focus on. When each player is also a coach, great things happen. To get the players to work together the challenges must be individually posed, and with collective benefits.

We have seen these in action, if a game is unequal the game breaks down, if the game allows no expansion, the kids don’t enjoy it, if there are no interactive challenges (like everyone at the same level, age, gender) the games lacks organic authenticity and learning diversity. All three are important.