Carl T Woods

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• PhD
• Associate Professor at The University of Queensland

Wayfinding is the process of embarking upon a purposeful, intentional, and self-regulated journey that takes an individual from an intended region in one landscape to another. This process is facilitated through an individual's capacity to utilise temporally structured, functional actions embedded within a particular environmental niche. Thus, indi...

The aim of this paper is to explore a different, more relational worldview of skill, learning and education in sport. To do this, we turn to the work of social anthropologist, Tim Ingold, leaning on the notion of enskilment, which proposes that learning is inseparable from doing and place . From this worldview, what is learned is not an established...

This inquiry explores a theoretical question, of applied practical relevance in fields like sport science, relating to how people come to know the performance landscapes they inhabit, and the dynamic opportunities for action they present. Here, we propose that how people come to know their performance landscapes, and how they learn to correspond wi...

Anthropologist Tim Ingold recounts that humans inhabit a familiar, yet evolving world – stretched between ‘the happened’ and ‘the not yet’. Despite efforts to the contrary, we can never fully be sure of its future configurations, making it difficult to determine how to solve yet-to-be-encountered problems, or how to skilfully navigate through uncha...

How best to summarise the professional work of sport scientists? What if we were to view them as artisans? As enskiled crafts-persons who think through and with their materials? What implications would this idea have for how we take up with research and ensuing scientific methods? Here, we explore these philosophical questions – of applied relevanc...

The aim of this study was to explore the benefits, barriers and strategies associated with integrating a situated approach to coach education in Australian football (soccer). To do so, an interpretivist qualitative research design was used, in which a diverse range of credentialed and experienced Australian football coaches, coach educators, coach...

Background Despite their prominence in the sport and human movement sciences, to date, there is no systematic insight about the development and content of movement quality assessments in athletic populations. This is an important gap to address, as it could yield both practical and scientific implications related to the continued screening of movem...

We live in troubling times. Amongst global political instability, rising economic inequality and a rapacious Western consumerist lifestyle, we face the impending risks of global warming and ecological collapse. In this short opinion paper, we bring this topic to the agenda of ecological psychology in the hope of stimulating fruitful conversation. T...

In a recent issue of Psychological Research, Bock, O., Huang, J-Y., Onur, O. A., & Memmert, D. (2024). The structure of cognitive strategies for wayfinding decisions. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 88, 476–486. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01863-3.) investigated cognitive strategies purported to guide wayfinding decisions at...

This paper explores the relation between thinking and making in the context of chess. Historically, this relation has been examined through an intellectualist tradition, which reduces chess to a series of calculations, connected up and isolated to the mind of a master. Here, we speak to this tradition through the voice of a theorist, and suggest it...

Philosopher-activist Heather Menzies advocates for an approach to ecological literacy that goes beyond knowing about the interconnected goings on of the world from afar by foregrounding the import of relating with a locale through prolonged periods of implicated participation. Here, we offer further insight to these views across three sections. Fir...

This paper explores how an enskilment approach could be harnessed toguide coach education in Australian football (soccer). To do so, we firstoverview current coach education practices in Australian football,looking specifically into the foundation of Football Australia’s coacheducation model, rooted in a transmissive metaphor. Then, drawing onkey i...

Objectives To explore the relationships between physical fitness and i) technical skills and ii) time-loss from Australian football injury in female players across the talent and participation pathways. Methods This study uses a subset of data from two cross-sectional and one prospective cohort studies. A total of 223 female Australian football pl...

In our societally extractive age, sport science risks being swept up in the intensifying desire to commodify the experiences of those that scientists proclaim to study. Coupled with the techno-digital revolution, this stems from a vertical (onto)logic that frames the sporting landscape as a static space filled with discrete objects waiting for us t...

Socio-cultural constraints shape behaviour in complexifying ways. In sport, for example, interconnected constraints play an important role in shaping the way a game is played, coached, and spectated. Here, we contend that player development frameworks in sport cannot be operationalised without careful consideration of the complex ecosystem in which...

Utilising novel ways of knowing, aligned with an ecological approach, the Learning in Development Research Framework (LDRF) has been introduced as a different way to guide research and practice in sport. A central feature of this framework is an appreciation of researcher embeddedness; positioned as an inhabitant who follows along with the unfoldin...

Background Observational tools can help refine practice design and guide the creation of effective learning environments. The intention of this study was to design and validate an observational instrument for assessing physical literacy that remains more faithful to the philosophically complex and holistic nature of the concept. Methods Framed by...

Objectives To examine the effects of match-related contextual variables on positional groups and success in the National Rugby League (NRL). Methods Data relating to match location, match outcome, quality of opposition and match type (absolute score differential) from all matches across the 2015–2019 NRL seasons were collected, in addition to 14 p...

Despite the importance placed on the design and delivery of formal coach education programs by Football Australia, there remains a lack of research relating to how formal coach education strategies support Australian football (i.e., soccer) coaches and their coaching practices. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, 20 highly qualified and...

A constraints-led approach (CLA), based on an ecological dynamics rationale for athlete learning and development has been applied to analyses of individual and team sports. To date, such an approach has yet to be applied to the learning of coaches. Here, we propose how applying a CLA in education and professional development programmes can shape em...

This conceptual analysis aims to challenge the state of high-performance sport by questioning the concept of specialization. To start, we offer a brief, but critical overview of what specialization currently entails. Then, shifting the paradigm, we suggest an expansion rather than a reduction of developmental possibilities once an athlete reaches t...

It is common to encourage people to envision life as a process of fulfilling their potential. But what exactly does this mean? Traditionally, this question has been addressed by way of ‘complementarity’; dividing the human into biological and cultural components. Fulfilment is placed on the side of the cultural; an acquisition of encoded secondary...

Never has the domain of sports coaching been so inundated with secondary information. In high-performance contexts, for example, coaches are routinely presented with detailed reports specifying features about an athlete’s or team’s performance. Here, we question whether such detailed secondary information has led us to know too much, obscuring what...

Background Sedentary, digital screen time in children represents a major concern due to its detrimental effect on children’s development. Nowadays, however, advances in technology allow children to actively interact with a digital screen using their whole body (e.g., exergaming), providing potential for movement learning. Exergaming technology may...

In professional team sports, like Rugby League, performance analysis has become an integral part of operational practices. This has helped practitioners gain deeper insight into phenomena like team and athlete behaviour and understanding how such behaviour may be influenced by various contextual factors. This information can then be used by coaches...

What would it mean to consider research in the sport sciences as a sustainable practice? Taking a step back, in such a context, what would sustainability even mean? The time is ripe to address such questions, and what we lay out here are our initial thoughts on this most contemporary of issues. We start by exploring what is meant by the term ‘susta...

Evaluating practice design is an important component of supporting skill acquisition and improving team-sport performance. Constraint manipulations, including creating a numerical advantage or disadvantage during training, may be implemented by coaches to influence aspects of player or team behaviour. This study presents methods to evaluate the int...

Creativity is a difficult construct to define given its diverse interpretations rooted in various worldviews of behaviour. In this chapter, it is conceptualised as an embodied process, defined as an exceptional, adaptive motor solution that functionally achieves a task goal. To support the development of creativity, the notion of enskilment is revi...

An important consideration for sport practitioners is the design of training environments that facilitate skill learning. This study presented a method to determine individual (age, games played, height, mass, and position), environmental (activity type) and task (pressure and possession time) constraint interaction to evaluate player training beha...

To examine the repeated bout effect (RBE) following two identical resistance bouts and its effect on bowling-specific performance in male cricketers. Male cricket pace bowlers (N = 10), who had not undertaken resistance exercises in the past six months, were invited to complete a familiarisation and resistance maximum testing, before participating...

A common belief is that closed self-paced motor tasks enable the per-former to “activate” a pre-prepared plan to (re)produce actions, despite top performers underperforming at “big” moments. Elite athletes and players seem incapable of repeating a movement pattern, despite having “plenty of time to prepare and ‘run-off’ their well-drilled, standard...

A common belief is that closed self-paced motor tasks enable the per-former to “activate” a pre-prepared plan to (re)produce actions, despite top performers underperforming at “big” moments. Elite athletes and players seem incapable of repeating a movement pattern, despite having “plenty of time to prepare and ‘run-off’ their well-drilled, standard...

What should professional development of knowledge and skills of academic sport scientists look like? We address this question by first dwelling in what ‘being a professional academic’ entails. Professionals work methodically, typically specialising their knowledge and skills while strategically planning how to progress their careers, often not rock...

In this paper, we consider how youth sport and (talent) development environments have adapted to, and are constrained by, social and cultural forces. Empirical evidence from an 18-month ethnographic case study highlights how social and cultural constraints influence the skill development and psychological wellbeing of young football players. We uti...

This cross-sectional study investigated differences in lower body power of state and non-state representative junior Australian football (AF) players through countermovement jump (CMJ) and squat jump (SJ) performance. A total of 627 players performed the CMJ and SJ at the end of the pre-season phase over a two-week period, with each player grouped...

In this paper, we outline an ecological approach to practice design in American football to support coaches in helping players to coordinate skilled movement behaviours in dynamic performance environments. This approach may require moving away from some long-held practice approaches traditionally employed by some coaches across all performance leve...

Ideas and concepts taken from ecological dynamics might provide an alternative perspective on physical literacy assessment. The aim of this paper was to pilot an assessment of physical literacy conceptualised in an ecological dynamics theoretical rationale. The assessment that was designed has a number of unique features: its scale of analysis is c...

Duration is a key component in the design of training activities in sport which aim to enhance athlete skills and physical qualities. Training duration is often a balance between reaching skill development and physiological targets set by practitioners. This study aimed to exemplify change point time-series analyses to inform training activity dura...

The value of talent development programmes, aimed at nurturing children and adolescents into high performance sport, has been widely questioned. However, there seems to be some agreement that the general concept of talent development is not the issue, rather, the problems exist in the design, implementation, and management of these systems. These c...

Commonly classified as individual, task or environmental, constraints are boundaries which shape the emergence of functional movement solutions. In applied sport, an ongoing challenge is to improve the measurement, analysis and understanding of constraints to key stakeholders. Methodological considerations for furthering these pursuits should be ce...

There have been multiple calls made in the sport science literature for the promotion of interdisciplinarity to progress some of sports’ most prevailing challenges. Designing practice environments that support learning represents one such challenge, particularly given contemporary perspectives of skill acquisition and motor learning calls for coach...

Information technology has been integrated into most areas of sport, providing new insights, improving the efficiency of operational processes, and offering unique opportunities for exploration and inquiry. While acknowledging this positive impact, this paper explores whether sufficient consideration has been directed towards what technology risks...

Over the last two centuries, there has been a belief that coaching and physical education should be informed by a blend of experiential and empirical knowledge (Bailey et al., 2018). The challenge we face, though, is that whilst these forms of knowledge coexist and entangle to inform an individual’s pedagogical practices, they operate on very diffe...

As it is appreciated that learning is a non-linear process – implying that coaching methodologies in sport should be accommodative – it is reasonable to suggest that player development pathways should also account for this non-linearity. A constraints-led approach (CLA), predicated on the theory of ecological dynamics, has been suggested as a viabl...

Objectives To describe injury profiles of Australian football players and explore trends across five, women’s and girls’ competition levels. Design Prospective cohort study. Methods Injuries were prospectively recorded by team personnel across one or two seasons of Australian football (2017-18 and/or 2018-19) including five, women’s and girls’ co...

The aim of this study was to explore differences in the physical fitness and anthropometric profiles between birth year quartiles of players attending the Australian Football League (AFL) National Draft Combine. Date of birth, anthropometric, 20 m sprint, vertical and running vertical jump, AFL planned agility, and 20 m Multi-Stage Fitness Test (MS...

The promotion of inter- and multidisciplinarity - broadly drawing on other disciplines to help collaboratively answer important questions to the field - has been an important goal for many professional development organisations, universities, and research institutes in sport science. While welcoming collaboration, this opinion piece discusses the v...

Objectives This study examined the effect of match location, score-line, team quality and match outcome on the expression of team playing styles in the National Rugby League (NRL) across the 2015–2019 seasons. Methods Thirty-eight performance indicators (e.g. offloads, runs) from all NRL games (n = 2010) were collected. Match-related factors exami...

The design of sports practice environments can be informed through data collected and analysed according to principles of the constraints-led approach. In this study, three manipulated environmental (area per player, number of players and team outnumber) and two task (activity objective and disposal limitations) constraints were measured during pro...

The current study examined the acute effects of a bout of resistance training on cricket bowling-specific motor performance. Eight sub-elite, resistance-untrained, adolescent male fast bowlers (age 15 ± 1.7 years; height 1.8 ± 0.1 m; weight 67.9 ± 7.9 kg) completed a bout of upper and lower body resistance exercises. Indirect markers of muscle dama...

Objectives: To examine physical fitness profiles of female Australian football players and investigate differences according to competition level. Methods: A testing battery of 28 physical fitness assessments was undertaken with 240 players across five competition levels: elite senior (≥18 years), non-elite senior (≥18 years), high-level junior (<1...

Background: In this paper, we explore physical education from a relational worldview. Theoretically guided by an ecological dynamics framework, this perspective calls us to conceptualise ‘education’ in its etymological roots – ex-ducere – meaning ‘to lead’ an individual ‘out’ into the world. In doing so, an educator would employ a ‘softer’ pedagogy...

This is an exciting era for applied research in high-performance sporting environments. Specifically, there are growing calls for researchers to work with coaches to produce 'real-world' case examples that offer first-hand experiences into the application of theory. Whilst ecological dynamics has emerged as a guiding theoretical framework for learn...

Pressure is an important constraint on sports performance and is typically measured through manual notational analysis. A continuous representation of pressure, along with semi-automated measurement, would serve to improve the efficiency of practice design and analysis, as well as provide additional context to player competition performance. Using...

Objectives: To profile the kicking and handballing accuracy of female Australian football (AF) players and investigate potential differences across five competition levels. Methods: Altogether, 205 female players were classified into five competition levels: elite senior (≥18 years) (n=35), non-elite senior (≥18 years) (n=58), high-level junior (<1...

Representative learning design proposes that a training task should represent informational constraints present within a competitive environment. To assess the level of representativeness of a training task, the frequency and interaction of constraints should be measured. This study compared constraint interactions and their frequencies in training...

With increasing resources in sports organisations being allocated to the development and preparation of individual athletes and sub-groups with specialist performance roles, the work of coaches, specialist (role) coaches and support staff needs to be functionally and coherently integrated. This integration of sport science support and coaching can...

Where do novel and innovative ideas in sport science come from? How do researchers and practitioners collectively explore the dynamic landscape of inquiry, problem, solution and application? How do they learn to skilfully navigate from current place and practice toward the next idea located beyond their current vantage point? These questions are no...

This study examined the relationship between evasive skill and developmental level in a rugby league (RL) talent pathway. An observational and cross-sectional research design was used with a total sample of 90 male participants (under 18, n = 30; under 20, n = 30; and state league, n = 30) performing an attack play task, requiring three attackers t...

Contemporary models for athlete development and performance preparation in sport have advocated a role re-conceptualisation for coaches grounded as learning environment designers. Within this re-conceptualisation, expert practitioners are encouraged to draw upon their experiential knowledge to design representative and meaningful learning activitie...

Background: Understanding the relationships between physical fitness characteristics and sports injury may assist with the development of injury minimisation programs. The purpose of this systematic review was to investigate the association between physical fitness attributes and sports injury in female, team ball sport players. Methods: Four sc...

Objectives: This study aimed to identify styles of play in the National Rugby League (NRL) relative to season and end of season rank (position on the NRL ladder) across the 2015-2019 seasons. Design: Retrospective, longitudinal analysis of performance indicators. Methods: Forty-eight performance indicators (e.g. runs, tackles) from all NRL teams an...

A fundamental challenge for practitioners in high-level sporting environments concerns how to support athletes in adapting behaviours to solve emergent problems during competitive performance. Guided by an ecological dynamics framework, the design and integration of competitive performance preparation models that place athlete-environment interacti...

This study sought to longitudinally and retrospectively determine the relationship between professional career attainment and the development of anthropometric and physical qualities in junior Australian footballers. Eighty adolescent male Australian footballers from a single state academy previously selected onto an under 16 s talent development s...

Currently, there are numerous definitions and interpretations of the concept of physical literacy within the literature, potentially leading to a lack of consensus as to how to employ it in practice. In this position paper, we argue that ecological dynamics is well-positioned to provide a theoretical framework that will bring clarity as well as sup...

Over two decades ago, Davids et al. (1994) and Handford et al. (1997) raised theoretical concerns associated with traditional, reductionist, and mechanistic perspectives of movement coordination and skill acquisition for sport scientists interested in practical applications for training designs. These seminal papers advocated an emerging consciousn...

Background: Understanding the relationships between physical fitness attributes and sport-specific technical skills may assist with the establishment of beneficial training interventions. The aim of this systematic review was to determine if physical fitness qualities were associated with performance of sport-specific technical skills in female, te...

PurposeThis study examined the post-activation potentiation effects of body-weight lunge exercises with blood-flow restriction on jump performance. Eighteen anaerobically trained men took part in this study across 3 weeks.Methods During the first week, participants were familiarised with the lunge exercises with blood-flow restriction and the drop-...

Objectives: This study aimed to: 1) examine recent seasonal changes in performance indicators for different National Rugby League (NRL) playing positions; and 2) determine the accuracy of performance indicators to classify and discriminate positional groups in the NRL. Methods: 48 performance indicators (e.g. passes, tackles) from all NRL games du...

This study compared the passing and tackling qualities of talent identified rugby league (RL) players within a developmental pathway. From a total of 88 players, three developmental levels were defined: under 18 years (U18; n = 27), under 20 years (U20; n = 29), and state league (SL; n = 32). All participants performed skills tests that measured pa...

This study explored the differences in match play between elite and semi-elite Australian football (AF) conceptualised through the lens of ecological dynamics. We sampled naturalistic constraints from match play across two AF competitions (elite and semi-elite) and heuristically classified them into task, environmental and individual classes. Data...

The aim of this study was to explore the (dis)similarity of game-play characteristics throughout an in-season period within the National Basketball Association. Thirteen performance-related indicators of all 1230 games of the regular 2016–2017 season in the National Basketball Association were analysed. Non-metric multidimensional scaling was used...

Ecological dynamics is a contemporary theory of skill acquisition, advocating the mutuality of the performer-environment system, with clear implications for the design of innovative training environments in elite sport. It contends that performance behaviours emerge, and are adapted, by athletes satisfying a confluence of constraints impacting on t...

Objectives To compare the game-play characteristics between the European Super League and the National Rugby League competitions. Methods Eleven team performance indicators were extracted from each match played by every European Super League and National Rugby League team over their respective 2016 season. Data were averaged, classified according...

How integrity is understood depends on the context. This paper explores the idea of integrity of sport, specifically the sub-elite South Australian National Football League competition. This mixed-methods study utilized both surveys and interviews to understand the issues that threaten the integrity of the South Australian competition. Threats emer...

This study determined the performance characteristics associated with successful exponents in Pencak Silat combat, as well as examined the relationship between performance indicators and match outcome (2015 South-East Asian Games and the 2016 Silat World Championship) using both linear (binary logistic regression) and non-linear (Conditional Interf...

Objectives To establish the discriminant validity of the athletic ability assessment in elite Australian rules football. Secondarily, to examine the association between athletic ability assessment and maximum running velocity extracted from elite Australian rules football game-play. Methods To establish the discriminant validity of the athletic ab...

Analysis of netball has received scant attention in the literature and there is little understanding of the dynamics of netball game-play. This study aimed to analyse team and seasonal performance indicator (dis)similarity in the ANZ Championship (netball). Total season values for nine performance indicators were analysed for the ten ANZ Championsh...

Background: Learning transfer is defined as an individual’s capability to apply prior learnt perceptual, motor or conceptual skills to a novel task or performance environment. In the sport sciences, learning transfers have been investigated from an athlete-specific perspective. However, sport scientists should also consider the benefits of cross-di...

Background: This study examined the postactivation potentiation effects of overloaded cycling on subsequent Wingate performance. Methods: Twenty anaerobic-trained men took part in this study. The participants were randomly allocated to complete three testing sessions separated by 7 days. Each week, participants either undertook a control session...

This study investigated the effect of manipulating field dimensions on the technical and physical profiles of Australian football (AF) players during small-sided games (SSGs). A total of 40 male players (23.9 ± 3.5 y) participated in three, five-a-side SSGs; defined as 'small' (20m x 30m; 600m), 'medium' (30m x 40m; 1200m), and 'large' (40m x 50m;...

The Olympic Games is the pinnacle international sporting competition with team sport coaches interested in key performance indicators to assist the development of match strategies for success. This study examined the relationship between team performance indicators and match outcome during the women’s basketball tournament at the Olympic Games. Tea...

The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of defensive pressure on the execution of attacking skills in international women's rugby sevens. Performance analyses were conducted across 42 training camp drills during the 2012–2013 season. Training camp sessions were recorded using a video camera positioned from an aerial perspective, wi...

This study determined the effect of field size constraint on the technical characteristics of small-sided games (SSGs) in Australian Football (AF). A total of 40 sub-elite U18 male players (23.9 ± 3.5 y) participated in three, five-a-side SSGs; defined as ‘small’ (20m x 30m; 600m2), ‘medium’ (30m x 40m; 1200m2) and ‘large’ (40m x 50m; 2000m2). The...

This study compared the physical, anthropometric and athletic movement qualities of talent identified rugby league (RL) players within a development pathway. From a total of 174 players, three developmental levels were defined: under 18 (U18; n = 52), under 20 (U20; n = 53), and state league (SL; n = 69). All players performed a test battery that c...

Objectives: To compare game-play characteristics between elite youth and senior Australian National Rugby League (NRL) competitions. Design: Longitudinal observational. Methods: The dataset consisted of 12 team performance indicators (e.g., 'all runs', 'offloads' and 'tackles') extracted from all 2016 national under 20 (U20) competition (elite yout...

Career transitions in sport are inevitable and can be normative or non-normative. Thus, retirement experiences are significantly dependent on how the athletes perceive the circumstances surrounding their retirement. While the discontinuation of a sports career is an important transition, it is not the only transition faced by athletes. The aim of t...