
My background as an experienced coach across traditional sports and esports, alongside my academic understanding of skill acquisition has provided me with a critical lens to evaluate and suggest improvements to practice design and delivery.

Esports teams and the coaches of those teams spend a lot of time engaging in the various practice environments (i.e., solo queue, scrims, reviews). Both anecdotal accounts from players, coaches and academic investigations by researchers interested in esports have commented on the general inefficiency and ineffectiveness that exists within the practice environments afforded for aspiring and current professional esport athletes (Abbott et al., 2022). 

## The Constraints Led Approach

I wrote a perspective article at the start of 2023 [Coaching & Talent Development: A Theoretical Framework and Suggestions for Future Research](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1191801/full?utm_source=F-NTF&utm_medium=EMLX&utm_campaign=PRD_FEOPS_20170000_ARTICLE) which briefly outlines the purpose of the Constraints Led Approach (CLA). To summarize that article, CLA is a tool that allows athlete learning and development to emerge as they explore various solutions within their practice environment. The role of the coach within this process is to design practices that can attune the attention of an athlete and inviting goal directed behavior through the manipulation of 3 constraints (4 in the case of LoL): i) Individual, ii) Individual-Champion, iii) Task, and iv) Environment.

- **Individual:** Personal (physical or psychological) characteristics of the gamer (Reaction Time, Emotional Control)
- **Individual-Champion:** The characteristics of the champion chosen within League of Legends (Abilities, Scaling, Build, META)
- **Task:** What is the athlete trying to accomplish and how are they trying/allowed to accomplish it (Lane Assignment, Game State
- **Environment:** This can range from anything that is outside of the game like, temperature of the room, peripherals, or even in game metrics like team composition or map type (ARAM vs. Summoners Rift). 

## Current Applications of CLA in Esports Training

Through my work as a performance coach and now skill acquisition specialist, I go and support teams to better understand how to design a performance and training schedule that works for them. In March 2024, I published a case study exploring the application of CLA to specifically develop team communication and coordination in LoL. 

A core component for skillful displays of team performance is the ability for the team to successfully synchronize and coordinate their actions. The second component is attributed to the team’s ability to communicate. This poses a challenge for most teams and coaches in esports as many rosters feature a mixture of experiences (rookies ↔ veterans) leading to often misalignment in how to play the game, which can lead to stressful/unproductive training environments if not navigated effectively. This highlights the need for coaches to be proactive in the development of these skills across the team. 

## Developing Co-ordination and Communication

Both coordination and communication are key factors within performance, however the development, retention and transfer of those skills can be difficult to achieve, measure and evaluate. To better understand these components, it is important to note that they both can be expressed explicitly and implicitly. 

|  | Coordination | Communication |
| - | -: | -: |
| **Implicit** | Occurs through non-verbal interactions and understanding of team mates “working” habits (preferences) | Non verbal communication that conveys information (i.e., body language, pings) |
| **Explicit** | Occurs through deliberate, visible, and planned efforts  | Verbal communication that conveys information (i.e., calling for gank, timing summoner spell)  |

Within this case study, we focused on achieving three goals:

1.	**Developing Implicit Coordination**
We focused on developing implicit coordination as studies within traditional sports coaching research has shows that 50-70% of human communication is conveyed implicitly, which can have significant implications for team performance (Weinberg & Gould, 2023)

2.	**Greater Awareness of Teammates Behvaiour** 
We focused on achieving this aim as it is vital for players to be able to anticipate (predict) and dynamically adjust (adapt) to both the behavior of their teammates, and the actions of the opponents (Rico et al., 2008). Being able to think one step ahead is always favorable to team performance.

3.	**Effective Communication Strategies**
Lastly, as every team will spend time trying to identify who should be the primary and secondary shotcaller in LoL teams, communication is a clear skill for any team to consciously practice. Furthermore, during my engagement with the team, we particularly struggled with explicitly expressing meaningful information (too much ↔ too little), which acted as a source of stress within the team environment.

## How did we implement CLA?

We applied CLA by designing two main interventions that featured an environmental constraint, and task constraint to designated scrims blocks that were pre-agreed upon within the coaching staff. 

Intervention 1 contained three variations which manipulated the players ability to explicitly communicate with their teammates. Players engaged in scrims where they were a) not allowed to communicate between 3:30 & 14 minutes (game time) or until first tower was destroyed, b) not allowed to communicate after 14 minutes (game time) or after first tower was destroyed until the end of the game, and c) not allowed to communicate for the whole game. This intervention achieved aims 1 & 2, as it promoted players to refer to their mini-map more often before executing plays to confirm team/opposition positioning, and pay more attention to pings as a means of communication within the team. 

Intervention 2 was coined “Lights Off”. This activity constrained players ability to use wards. The rules within this intervention was that 3 / 5 players must play using Sweepers Lens’ or Farsight Alteration, alongside having 1 active pink ward. The support alongside 1 nominated player can use Warding Totem to provide vision for the team. This intervention achieved aims 2 and 3, as it promoted players to use “deductive reasoning” to anticipate the position and opportunities for the opposition. It also added emphasis on the explicit communication strategies within the team, as each player must be able to convey meaningful and accurate information, as well as providing reminders of potential whereabouts. 

## What did we find?

Attached below are some of the themes that emerged from the reflections we received from the players relating to their experiences engaging in these ‘novel’ practices.  To have a full read of what our results mean, please access the full case study [here](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378530198_Esports_Coaching_Applying_a_Constraints-Led_Approach_to_Develop_Team_Coordination_and_Communication).

Four main themes were recorded during the evaluation of these CLA informed scrims:

1.	**Identifying Implicit Learning Objectives**
Players were not explicitly informed about the intentions behind the application of CLA, and were accurately able to reflect and verbalize how the scrim challenged them, and what skills they developed.

2.	**A Sense of Improvement**
Participants further voiced positive experiences of engaging with CLA informed scrims. The interventions allowed them to identify individual/team mistakes more effectively during performance and during the review period, allowing for more clear plans of actions/development.

3.	**Developing Trust with Teammates**
As the team were still in the process of developing a clear team identity on the rift, they further commented on how the use of these interventions allowed to them to develop/strengthen their trust amongst teammates, as they were challenged to make decisions without perfect information and actively following the call.

4.	**Dealing with Instability**
Lastly, as for many of the players, this type of training environment was novel, therefore, introduced a level of instability by making the game more difficult, unfamiliar, and overall challenging them “to do more, with less”, which they reported to find enjoyable.

We can see that CLA informed practices can have a place within LoL, even if it may be a minor role within your coaching structure. If you are a coach who is looking for more information surrounding CLA, or how you can implement CLA effectively within your current coaching structure, please contact me through [Coachify](https://coachify.gg/@kabs), [Twitter (X)](https://twitter.com/KabirBubna) or Discord (donerkabir). 


Scrims - a Constraints Led Approach

Company

Legal

Footer

Company

Legal