One day at a time: Steps to optimising the daily training environment for talent development

This chapter discusses evidence-based practice strategies that can be used to inform skill acquisition training programs in daily training environments. A challenge for practitioners is identifying which areas of practice are sub-optimal, and how to intervene with appropriately periodised skill acquisition training programs. Therefore, we focus on two areas to underpin and inform skill training program design: (1) assessment of how pertinent the current practice environment is, and (2) strategies to intervene with skill acquisition training programs, with a particular focus on skill periodisation and skill overload using the constraints-led framework. Notably, we contend that skill acquisition training programs should strive to capture relevant data to inform practitioner decision making, with a focus on appropriately challenging and expanding an athlete’s perception and action boundaries. Two examples are provided to demonstrate implementation of these ideas. One example details training progressions of an elite volleyball player across a skill intervention training block. The second example highlights how the same process can be applied when considering the design of junior sport (i.e., scaling junior sport). We argue that following these ideas will lead to relevant and impactful skill acquistion training programs that (a) improve athletes’ skill and, most importantly, (b) transfer to competition.