In 2022, Thomas Leeder published Behaviorism, Skinner, and Operant Conditioning: Considerations for Sport Coaching Practice — a thoughtful and balanced article examining how one of psychology’s most influential learning theories continues to shape coaching practice.
Leeder’s work matters because it holds up a mirror to the dominant coaching mindset: the belief that athletes learn best through control, repetition, and correction. While his goal is to encourage coaches to reflect, his analysis exposes a deeper issue in sport — we are still building our coaching on 20th-century assumptions about how humans learn.
Coaching Through Control: The Legacy of Behaviorism
Behaviorism, pioneered by figures like Pavlov, Thorndike, Watson, and later B.F. Skinner, defined learning as a measurable change in behaviour produced by environmental stimuli. The learner is viewed as a passive recipient, responding to rewards and punishments delivered by an external authority.
In sport, this became the foundation of the traditional coaching model — structured sessions, repetitive drills, and constant corrective feedback. Coaches praise or punish behaviour to reinforce desired actions (Skinner, 1953).
As Leeder notes, this model remains the most common in practice. Many coaches, often unknowingly, still rely on reinforcement schedules — praise for a good forehand, punishment for poor effort — as the primary means of shaping behaviour.
The issue is not that reinforcement doesn’t work; it’s that it works only at the surface. It produces compliance, not understanding.
The Problem: Treating Learning Like Conditioning
When we rely on operant conditioning, we reduce the complexity of human learning to stimulus–response chains.
The coach becomes a dispenser of cues; the athlete becomes a performer of tasks.
This view ignores the ecological and relational nature of sport. As Renshaw, Davids, and Araújo (2019) argue, learning in sport is not about transmitting correct movements — it’s about guiding self-organization through interaction with a dynamic environment.
The problem with reinforcement is that it strips away the context.
An athlete may repeat a movement correctly in training but fail to adapt under pressure because their learning never included perception, decision-making, or variability — the realities of competition.
As Leeder (2022) explains, “behaviorist coaching is characterized by highly structured, coach-led technical practices.”
This structure is comforting, but it’s also constraining.
It builds dependance on instruction, not independence in action.
Why Athletes Aren’t Rats in a Box
Skinner’s “operant conditioning chamber” — the Skinner box — is famous for teaching rats to press levers for food.
In many ways, traditional tennis drills replicate this idea.
Players repeat the same shot, in the same pattern, to receive the same reward: praise, approval, or a target hit.
But humans don’t learn like rats.
Our learning is influenced by emotion, intention, and social interaction.
As Chow, Davids, and Button (2021) show, skill emerges from the continuous coupling between perception and action, not from isolated repetition.
When a coach removes decision-making, they remove learning.
When they impose a “correct” technique, they interrupt the athlete’s natural search for effective solutions.
The more controlled the session, the less adaptable the athlete becomes.
Moving Beyond Reinforcement: Coaching as Interaction
Leeder deserves credit for reminding coaches that no theory has a monopoly on learning. But to move forward, we must recognize that behaviorism and ecological approaches rest on incompatible epistemologies.
Behaviorism sees learning as something done to the athlete.
Ecological dynamics sees learning as something that emerges through the athlete’s interaction with their environment.
The difference is profound.
Where Skinner spoke of “reinforcement schedules,” ecological coaching speaks of representative learning design — creating environments that preserve the informational variables of the game (Davids et al., 2015).
Where behaviorism focuses on compliance, ecological coaching focuses on adaptability.
Where one rewards performance, the other designs for perception.
What Coaches Can Do Differently
- Design, don’t direct.
Replace drills with practice environments that mirror the demands of competition. Let players explore, fail, and adapt. - Reward exploration, not repetition.
Praise curiosity, problem-solving, and risk-taking — not just “getting it right.” - Shape information, not behaviour.
Manipulate constraints (space, time, rules) rather than delivering commands. - See variability as learning, not error.
Fluctuations in performance show that the athlete is searching for stable solutions under changing conditions. - Coach for transfer, not control.
A player who can adapt to different opponents, surfaces, and contexts is far more skilled than one who can reproduce a textbook technique.
From Control to Connection
Behaviorism gave coaching structure. It introduced discipline, clarity, and consistency. But it also built a culture of dependence and conformity — one where the coach became the authority, and the player became the product.
To build adaptable, resilient, and self-reliant athletes, we must evolve.
We must trade control for curiosity.
Instruction for exploration.
Reinforcement for representation.
Because players don’t learn through what we tell them.
They learn through what the game tells them — if we design it right.
References
Chow, J. Y., Davids, K., & Button, C. (2021). Nonlinear pedagogy in skill acquisition: An introduction. Routledge.
Davids, K., Renshaw, I., & Araújo, D. (2015). Ecological dynamics and motor learning design in sport. In Skill acquisition in sport: Research, theory and practice (3rd ed.). Routledge.
Leeder, T. M. (2022). Behaviorism, Skinner, and Operant Conditioning: Considerations for Sport Coaching Practice. Strategies: A Journal for Physical and Sport Educators, 35(3), 27–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/08924562.2022.2052776
Renshaw, I., Davids, K., Newcombe, D., & Roberts, W. (2019). The constraints-led approach: Principles for sports coaching and practice design. Routledge.
Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and Human Behavior. The Free Press.
