Examining Intentions for Impact: Understanding What Influences the Planning of High-Level Team Sport Coaches
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article "Examining intentions for impact: understanding what influences the planning of high-level team sport coaches" provides a detailed analysis of how coaches form intentions for impact, plan game form activities, and establish success criteria.
Strengths of the article include its thorough exploration of coaches' intentions through different components of fidelity, such as physical, affective, and action fidelity. The study delves into how coaches plan at various levels (macro, meso, micro) and the interdisciplinary effort involved in weekly planning. Moreover, the discussion on challenges faced by coaches in defining success criteria and prioritizing process markers over specific outcomes offers valuable insights.
One area for improvement could be providing clearer examples or case studies to illustrate the concepts discussed, making the article more engaging and practical for readers. Additionally, a more explicit discussion on how coaches can overcome challenges in defining success criteria and aligning them with their intentions would enhance the practical applicability of the research. Further exploration of how coaches balance physical fidelity with other aspects of player development could deepen the analysis and provide a more holistic view of coaching practices in team sports. In conclusion, the article offers a comprehensive examination of how high-level team sports coaches approach planning and intention-setting, emphasizing the importance of considering various types of fidelity in practice design. By addressing the points for improvement suggested above, the article could further enhance its impact and relevance to coaching practices in sports.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for taking the time to read the paper and offer these suggestions and comments to improve the manuscript. We have responded to comments in red font.
One area for improvement could be providing clearer examples or case studies to illustrate the concepts discussed, making the article more engaging and practical for readers.
Thank you for this suggestion. We have added a small section with some practical examples as suggested, which now hopefully adds some value to the reader, at L116: “As broad examples, a training form exercise such as an unopposed drill will likely offer very limited affective, conceptual and perhaps action fidelity. This is due to the activity lacking the emotional and problem solving characteristics associated with competition, in addition to the lack of perception-action coupling which might yield a low level of action fidelity [33]. Yet, depending on the nature of the sport and activity, it may be possible to initiate greater physical fidelity dependent on the intensity and design of this activity (i.e. manipulation of distance covered and recovery times). As another example, a small sided, 3 v 3 game with one side attacking continuously throughout, would likely have higher levels of affective fidelity than the previous example however conceptual fidelity may be limited due to the continuous nature of the game while the coupling of perception and action would likely produce high action fidelity.”
Additionally, a more explicit discussion on how coaches can overcome challenges in defining success criteria and aligning them with their intentions would enhance the practical applicability of the research.
We thank the reviewer for this suggestion. An addition has been made at L621: “As many of these participants displayed success criteria and intentions for impact in subtle conflict to each other, there is the potential to utilise the fidelity framework to better assist coaches in defining success criteria and aligning it with their intentions. This may be beneficial to coaches to move beyond content based intentions and success criteria to a focus on player experience. Similarly, the fidelity framework proposed in this paper may also help coaches progress from such a strong focus on physical metrics and allow for a more rounded development of players and teams by taking into account the affective, problem solving and skill transfer experiences of the player in a more purposeful manner than currently seems to be the case, at least among this cohort.”
Further exploration of how coaches balance physical fidelity with other aspects of player development could deepen the analysis and provide a more holistic view of coaching practices in team sports. In conclusion, the article offers a comprehensive examination of how high-level team sports coaches approach planning and intention-setting, emphasizing the importance of considering various types of fidelity in practice design. By addressing the points for improvement suggested above, the article could further enhance its impact and relevance to coaching practices in sports.
We thank the reviewer for their useful and positive comments. To the point that coaches balance physical fidelity with a holistic view, our findings suggest that this group of coaches don't balance physical fidelity with other aspects of player development. Our analysis showed that coaches overwhelmingly prioritise physical fidelity of practice at the detriment of the other components of fidelity and as such may not be providing a holistic development opportunity to players. In addition, balancing physical fidelity may not be a desirable end – it may be the case that coaches deliberately manipulate fidelity based on their intentions. We have reemphasised this at L591: “Given that the types of fidelity may represent the types of challenge presented to the athlete, an approach which prioritises physical is likely unable to cater to the breadth of athlete development. An alternative approach could involve greater recognition of the different challenge markers we can offer players in the form of types of fidelity. This may give the coach the opportunity to frame their activity design by emphasising or deemphasising respective types of fidelity across a session. As a consequence, aiming for appropriate fidelity based on intention within a single session and across a block of time, much as is standard practice in physical performance [79]. An example might mean that “activity A” is designed with ‘above game’ physical fidelity in mind and may result in low levels of other types of fidelity while the next activity may be designed with high conceptual fidelity in mind, deliberately manipulating lower physical fidelity to allow time for greater reflection.”
Reviewer 2 Report
Your manuscript appears to add to the literature. I agree, elite coaches are underrepresented in the literature. One reason is they are hard to contact without help. I believe the discussion needs more specifics on the practical applications of what you learned (what they said), barriers/limitations to what they said/how you did your research, and concrete future research directions. Thank you for your efforts.
4. General Discussion
Add sections on limitations, future research directions, and practical applications. Applications to youth sport would be enjoyable, but perhaps one cannot apply elite sport to youth sport.
Those are a few main details that are missing.
Other comments
Abstract - I would pull it together in one block paragraph.
Because of the interviews though quantitative articles can be long, I wonder if there is a way to drop a couple pages of text before adding what I asked. I am obviously asking for more, yet believe the manuscript is long as is.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for taking the time to read the paper and offer these suggestions and comments to improve the manuscript. We have responded to comments in red font.
Add sections on limitations, future research directions, and practical applications.
Thank you for this. We have added a section on limitations at L644: “One limitation often associated with qualitative research is the risk of recall bias due to the retrospective nature of our enquiry. Thus, whilst coaches may not have used these intentions in practice, it may be the result of retrospective meaning making. Furthermore, it is important to recognise that the findings of this study should not be used to generalise across coaching populations. The sample of coaches in this study is in no way representative of the broader coaching workforce, coaches were sampled based on their level of expertise and track record of high quality outcomes. As a result, we ask the reader to consider transferability of findings and implications rather than broader generalisability [93]. Finally, these interviews were not triangulated with any other form of data and while we do not consider this to be a weakness given our positionality as interpretive researchers, triangulation could potentially present another lens of analysis.”
We have also added a section containing practical examples at L116: “As broad examples, a training form exercise such as an unopposed drill will likely offer very limited affective, conceptual and perhaps action fidelity. This is due to the activity lacking the emotional and problem solving characteristics associated with competition, in addition to the lack of perception-action coupling which might yield a low level of action fidelity [33]. Yet, depending on the nature of the sport and activity, it may be possible to initiate greater physical fidelity dependent on the intensity and design of this activity (i.e. manipulation of distance covered and recovery times). As another example, a small sided, 3 v 3 game with one side attacking continuously throughout, would likely have higher levels of affective fidelity than the previous example however conceptual fidelity may be limited due to the continuous nature of the game while the coupling of perception and action would likely produce high action fidelity.”
In regards to the suggestion on future research directions, the reviewer may have missed section at L608: “4.2 Opportunities for conceptual framing and measurement support”. Here we discuss future research opportunities.
Applications to youth sport would be enjoyable, but perhaps one cannot apply elite sport to youth sport.
We thank the reviewer for this comment. We are very much in agreement that the findings of this research are highly specific to the participants interviewed and as such we would not like to generalise such contextual findings. We have further developed this point at L670 “As a result, we ask the reader to consider transferability of findings and implications rather than broader generalisability [93]”
Those are a few main details that are missing.
Other comments
Abstract - I would pull it together in one block paragraph.
We thank the reviewer for this suggestion and have edited as suggested at L5-19.
Because of the interviews though quantitative articles can be long, I wonder if there is a way to drop a couple pages of text before adding what I asked. I am obviously asking for more, yet believe the manuscript is long as is.
Again we would like to express our gratitude to the reviewer for this comment. We agree that the manuscript is long, in part due to its qualitative nature, however we would be reluctant to delete too much content, and certainly would feel unable to drop 2 pages as we would run the risk of ‘under analysing’ a complex phenomenon, leaving the reader without sufficient depth to critically evaluate our findings. After conducted a full review of the manuscript, making appropriate changes, we hope that these satisfy the reviewer.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for your revision.
I believe you addressed my concerns. Cutting pages is hard. I agree with your decision to not.
