The Game Doesn’t Care How You Move
An critique of the “Direct Instruction vs. Ecological Dynamic Systems” webinar by Stephen McKeown
A few days ago, I attended a webinar titled “Direct Instruction vs. Ecological Dynamic Systems-Games Based Approach, is Not a Helpful Debate” hosted by English coach Stephen McKeown.
He’s an experienced coach, clearly passionate about his craft, and his presentation was thoughtful, well-structured, and grounded in decades of work with young athletes.
And yet… as I listened, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing — not from his slides, but from the lens he was using to look at the problem.
The Premise: A False Rivalry
McKeown opened with a reasonable question: Why does it feel like coaches have to pick sides between game-based learning and direct instruction?
It’s a fair concern. On social media, it can sound like you’re either an “ecological zealot” who refuses to ever demonstrate a movement, or an “old-school instructor” who drills technique in isolation until the joy leaks out of the gym.
But that entire frame — EcoD vs. Direct Instruction — is already off balance.
One is a theoretical framework for how humans learn through interaction with their environment.
The other is a coaching behavior, a tool.
That’s not a rivalry. That’s a category error.
It’s like asking whether gravity and a hammer are opposing forces. One describes how objects move; the other is something you hold in your hand.
The Example That Gave It Away
Midway through the webinar, McKeown shared a story about a libero who habitually stepped backward before moving to a short serve.
His solution was clever, in a mechanical sense: attach Therabands to her ankles to restrict that backward step.
He then gave her explicit instructions about footwork — internal cues about where her feet and platform should be — before removing the bands and returning to a more game-like context.
It’s the kind of intervention that feels good to a coach.
You spot a problem. You fix the problem. You can see the fix happening.
And to be fair, there’s nothing wrong with wanting that clarity — we all crave it.
But this is where an ecological lens asks us to pause.
Because the game doesn’t give Theraband feedback. The game doesn’t instruct players where their hips should be.
The game only gives information — toss height, arm speed, ball spin, flight path, time to contact, teammate positioning, and pressure from opponents.
When we replace that information with elastic bands and verbal scripts, we may get compliance, but we lose attunement.
Direct Instruction Isn’t the Enemy — Control Is
Let’s be clear: there’s nothing inherently evil about direct instruction.
Sometimes a simple cue can help focus attention — especially when it points players back toward the information that actually matters.
The problem arises when we use instruction as a shortcut to make players do what we want, rather than learn what the game demands.
When the goal is compliance, we start designing environments that force the right movement.
When the goal is adaptability, we design environments that invite the right movement.
And the difference between the two is subtle but enormous.
The first approach produces players who need constant correction.
The second produces players who can self-correct because they’re in dialogue with the environment, not waiting for the coach’s next cue.
Whose Needs Are We Really Meeting?
The webinar was billed as an effort to “meet the needs of the learner.”
That sounds great — until you realize most of what was discussed had little to do with learners’ needs, and everything to do with the coach’s needs.
Every example centered on what he wanted players to do, how he wanted them to move, or what results he wanted to see. The learner’s “needs” became a polite rebrand for the coach’s expectations.
From an evidence-based standpoint, learner needs aren’t defined by how closely players match a model. They’re defined by how effectively they can perceive, adapt, and solve problems in a complex environment.
The ecological perspective flips the hierarchy:
The coach doesn’t give the learner a model.
The environment gives the learner information.
The coach designs the environment so that information becomes useful.
When we talk about “meeting the needs of the learner,” the question shouldn’t be “Did they perform the skill the way I wanted?”
It should be “Did they have access to information that let them adapt more effectively?”
Because when we center the coach’s comfort, we build conformity.
When we center the learner’s reality, we build capacity.
The Problem with the Four Stages of Competence
At one point, McKeown referenced the traditional four stages of competence — unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence.
It’s a neat little ladder. Linear. Predictable. Satisfying.
Unfortunately, it’s also a myth.
This model assumes that learning is a one-way climb — a clean, step-by-step march from ignorance to mastery — and that the coach’s job is to shepherd athletes up the staircase through a carefully controlled sequence of instruction.
But human learning doesn’t look like that. It loops, wobbles, and branches. It’s dynamic, messy, and context-dependent.
In real sport, players are constantly falling back into conscious awareness, recalibrating, adapting, and exploring new ways of solving old problems.
When you frame learning as linear, it becomes easy — even necessary — to justify coach control. Because if progress is defined by which stage the player is in, someone has to decide when they’ve “moved up.” That someone is almost always the coach.
And yet, the last thing a good coach actually wants is a player who performs unconsciously — just running on autopilot.
We want athletes who are alive to the game, who are perceiving, adjusting, and choosing — not ones who’ve been coached into sleepwalking through predictable patterns.
Learning isn’t a staircase. It’s a landscape — one full of peaks, valleys, detours, and unexpected connections. The coach’s role isn’t to pull the player up each step; it’s to design the landscape so the athlete can explore it effectively.
“The Kids These Days” Argument
Another theme in the webinar was that modern players — especially youth athletes — are more sedentary, less physically literate, and therefore “not ready” for fully game-based learning.
This argument crops up everywhere, usually followed by a nostalgic sigh about how “we used to play outside all day.”
There’s some truth there. Today’s players do live differently. But the ecological response isn’t to abandon the game and return to isolated drills; it’s to scale the task so they can still interact with real information in a manageable way.
If a player can’t handle the noise, we don’t mute the music — we turn down the volume.
Simplify the task, slow the serve, widen the target, limit the decision set — but keep the song recognizable. Because that’s how perception and action learn to dance.
Reps, but Which Kind?
McKeown also pointed to athletes like Serena Williams, Steph Curry, and Tom Brady — high-repetition performers whose success, he argued, shows the importance of deliberate, direct practice.
We love to quote Steph Curry’s shooting routine like it’s gospel — but that’s survivorship bias wearing a Warriors jersey.
For every Curry, there are thousands of players who did the same drills, with the same intensity, and never cracked the lineup at community college.
Maybe what made Curry special wasn’t the drill — it was the way he learned from the environment around it.
Maybe what set Serena apart wasn’t isolated repetition, but her ability to read and adapt in live rallies filled with uncertainty.
Maybe Brady’s precision wasn’t the product of static throwing reps, but of years coupling his actions to defensive movement, pressure, and time.
Repetition matters — but only when the information repeats, not just the movement.
It’s not how many shots you take that matters — it’s how many different situations you’ve learned to perceive and act within.
Design Over Delivery
The real work of coaching isn’t choosing between instruction and games.
It’s designing representative environments that make the right information shine through.
Sometimes that means we constrain the space, the speed, or the scoring.
Sometimes it means we nudge a player’s attention with a cue like “beat the ball.”
But what it never means is pulling athletes out of the world they’re trying to learn to navigate.
The volleyball court is already giving constant feedback — it just doesn’t use words.
Our job is to make sure players can hear it.
Notice. Adapt. Commit.
This is where the NAC framework lives beautifully:
Notice: What information is the athlete missing?
Adapt: Modify constraints to make that information louder, not quieter.
Commit: Let the athlete act on it, messily, repeatedly, and with intention.
When that happens, learning becomes self-organizing.
We don’t need Therabands and body scripts; we need affordances and clarity.
Final Thoughts
McKeown ended his talk by reminding coaches to “keep all the tools in the toolbox.”
That’s good advice — as long as we remember what the toolbox is for.
If ecological dynamics offers us anything, it’s a way to understand why tools work, not just that they do.
It’s about aligning our interventions with the physics of learning, not fighting against them.
So yes — keep your toolbox.
Just make sure your hammer isn’t being used to tune a piano.
If you’ve been wrestling with these same questions — when to intervene, when to let play emerge, when to cue, when to stay silent — I’d love to hear how you’re navigating that tension. Drop a comment, share your context, and let’s keep the conversation going.
And as always, thank you for reading.
Your attention, your curiosity, and your willingness to explore new ways of coaching are what make this work matter.
This is a superb piece. You cut through the false “Direct Instruction vs. Ecological Dynamics” divide and show it for what it is — a category mistake. The Theraband example captures the trap perfectly: we love visible fixes, but as you write, the game doesn’t give Theraband feedback, it gives information. That shift from compliance to attunement is the real hinge of learning.
I also loved how you dismantled the linear “Four Stages” idea and reframed repetition as exposure to information, not just motion. The NAC model ties it all together — giving coaches a way to intervene without drifting back into control. Thank you, Loren, for putting so much precision and care into this piece. It makes the complex understandable without flattening it.
Excellent piece