The Power of Task Simplification

Hi Coach,

Ever run a game or activity that was too hard for your players?

Me too.

Below are some learnings on how to make it easier without making it boring.

Last year, I coached my son’s kindergarten basketball team.

A team of kindergarteners (ages 5 and 6) playing basketball is awesome.

I was determined to lead practices, even with that young age, that were representative of what happens in the game.

We did games and activities that were representative of the game, but some of them were still too challenging for the athletes due to their current skill level and stage of physical development.

Then, this past summer, we ran some half-day NIKE Basketball Camps for 6-9-year-olds.

I was determined to figure out how we could run activities that were both representative of the game AND the right level of challenge.

Enter task simplification.

The traditional view of coaching is often centered around task decomposition — taking apart the “skill” and breaking it into multiple parts.

On the other hand, task simplification is about simplifying the task to find the right level of challenge, while still maintaining the key aspects of representative learning design (i.e. having a defense, using basketball rules, etc.).

This is easier said than done though.

At our camp, some of the activities and games were too challenging for the 6-and-7-year-olds, so I decided to constrain the defense to simplify the task for the offense.

Here are some constraints we used…

Obviously when you introduce these constraints into a game or activity, it is no longer 100% representative of what happens in competition, but it is maintaining some of the key variables in the environment and the relationship between perception and action for athletes.

The athletes were still making decisions based on the randomness of the environment and the level of challenge was now at a place where a lot more of the athletes could experience enjoyable levels of success.

One of the activities where I found the most success doing this was in an advantage game we would play each day. We started out playing it 3v1 (3 offense, 1 defense). The offense had a shot clock and was only allowed one shot attempt.

With some of the older groups, they quickly excelled at this game, so we added another defender and made it 3v2.

For one of the groups, the 3v2 was now too challenging, so we told the defense they could only use one hand, and it presented the right level of challenge for the offense.

For some of the youngest groups, even the 3v1 was too challenging at times, so we constrained the defense further. Either they couldn’t use their hands at all, or they could only use one hand.

It worked — even the least skilled athletes at camp started to experience some success in an activity that was far more representative of the game than if we totally removed defense and had them doing boring passing or finishing drills.

I recognize that many of the coaches reading this are NOT coaching beginners, but I believe there’s still significant opportunity for coaches to apply task simplification regardless of their level.

The goal is obviously not to stay in a simplified state, but to allow the athlete to experience success before increasing the level of challenge to further develop their skills.

A few thoughts on how this could apply in your coaching or leadership context…

Thanks for reading, I hope this serves you on your journey.

To your growth,

Luke Gromer, RYG Athletics

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