Faculdade de Motricidade Humana

Margarida Vaz de Carvalho, Henrique Lopes, Henrique Brito, Daniel Carrilho, Adriano Carvalho, and Duarte Araújo co-authored an article on the role of perception–action couplings in expert Jump Rope performance, published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise.

The article, “The Foundational Role of Perception-Action Couplings for Expert Performance in Jump Rope”, compared expert and novice performers during the Single Rope Speed Sprint to investigate how movement variability and coordination contribute to skilled performance. The study involved 36 participants, including 18 experts and 18 novices.

Experts showed greater performance stability alongside greater local movement variability, suggesting that skilled performance is not simply about reproducing the same movement repeatedly. Instead, variability can play a functional role, allowing performers to continuously adapt their movements while maintaining stable coordination.

These findings highlight adaptability as a key feature of expertise, supporting the idea that effective perception–action couplings allow athletes to remain stable at the level of performance while flexibly adjusting how that performance is achieved.

Read here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029226001366

Henrique Lopes, researcher at SpertLab and CIPER, recently participated in the International Conference on Perception and Action (ICPA) 2026, held in Omaha, Nebraska, USA.

During the conference, Henrique presented an oral communication on the ecological dynamics of decision-making in judo, sharing his research on how perception and action continuously interact to shape athletes’ decisions in combat sports.

ICPA brings together an international community of researchers working within ecological psychology and related fields to advance the understanding of perception–action systems in real-world contexts. Henrique’s participation provided an opportunity to discuss his work, exchange perspectives with researchers in the field, and contribute to ongoing developments in ecological approaches to sport performance.

Congratulations to Henrique on representing SpertLab and CIPER at this international scientific meeting!

More information: https://icpa2026omaha.com/

Daniel Carrilho, Henrique Lopes, and Duarte Araújo co-authored an article on how team cognition and coordinated action can be understood as an integrated process in team sports, published in Sports Medicine – Open.

The article, “Team Cognizant Action: Insights into Developing Team Synergies in Sports”, introduces the concept of team cognizant action, proposing that team cognition is not separate from action but is expressed through the continuous perception–action couplings between players and their performance environment.

From an ecological dynamics perspective, players coordinate by perceiving shared opportunities for action and adapting their movements to one another. These interactions support the emergence of team synergies, allowing the team to function as a coordinated unit while pursuing shared performance goals.

The article also highlights implications for practice design, suggesting that training should preserve key information–movement couplings from competition to develop shared perceptual attunement and collective movement calibration.

Read here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40798-026-01045-6

SpertLab took part in “Verão na ULisboa 2026”, welcoming participants to the Faculty of Human Kinetics for a closer look at the work developed in the laboratory. 

During the session, students were introduced to different approaches used by SpertLab researchers to analyze sport performance and behavior, exploring how information collected in sporting contexts can be observed, interpreted, and transformed into research.

The activity offered a practical insight into the methods and questions that guide the work developed at SpertLab and into the role of research in understanding sport performance.

More information: https://www.fmh.ulisboa.pt/noticias/item/3573-verao-na-ulisboa-fmh

The chapter, “Developing Adaptability and Creativity in Footballers Underpinned by Ecological Dynamics: A Case for Nonlinear Pedagogy”, explores how ecological dynamics and nonlinear pedagogy can support the development of players who are able to adapt their actions and find creative solutions to the continuously changing demands of the game.

Rather than relying on predetermined solutions, this perspective highlights the importance of designing learning environments that promote exploration and the emergence of functional behaviors through the interaction between the player, the task, and the environment.

This chapter is part of the book Football Coaching Pedagogy: Insights for Elite Player Development, published by Routledge.

Read here: https://www.routledge.com/Football-Coaching-Pedagogy-Insights-for-Elite-Player-Development/Nunes/p/book/9781041076414

Tiago Luzes, Miguel Moreira, Daniel Carrilho, and Adriano Carvalho have published a new article in the Journal of Sports Sciences examining the competition constraints structure of the CrossFit® Games through an ecological dynamics lens.

The study provides a systematic characterization of 218 tasks (2007–2025), revealing how performance emerges from the interaction of performer, environmental, and task constraints. It highlights the predominance of weightlifting and throwing movements, the growing role of gymnastics, and a clear shift toward multi-disciplinary tasks requiring integrated strength, endurance, and skill. 

By applying the MAST framework, the authors offer a robust foundation for understanding competition constraints and designing more representative training environments aligned with real performance contexts.

Read the full article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2026.2653304

On December 16, Margarida Vaz de Carvalho, a PhD student of SpertLab and CIPER, successfully defended her MSc dissertation in High-Performance Training in Sport at Faculdade de Motricidade Humana

Her dissertation, titled “Variability of Perception–Action and Its Role in Expertise in Jump Rope”, supervised by Professor Duarte Araujo, compared experts and novices in a single-rope speed sprint task. Findings show that expert performers exhibit greater local movement variability alongside greater global movement coordination, both closely linked to task goal achievement.

These findings challenge the traditional view of variability as mere noise and expertise as automaticity, showing instead that performance entails functional variability in perception–action coupling, informing how a constraints-led approach (CLA) can be used in training.

Margarida’s scientific rigor and novelty, framed by the dynamic research environment at SpertLab, are to be praised 👏

Duarte Araújo co-authored an article on teaching opportunities provided by different traditional games and the implications of Brazilian street football culture for youth training, published in Football Studies. Read here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.footst.2025.100010

This study examined the pedagogical potential of traditional Brazilian street football games (Bobinho and Timinho) in U-17 players under various task constraints. Results showed that these games improved ball possession and technical-tactical skills, with different learning opportunities emerging according to players’ skill levels, supporting their use as flexible teaching tools in youth football development.

No passado dia 19 de novembro, o grupo Skill Learning (CIPER) organizou na Faculdade de Motricidade Humana uma conferência dedicada à aprendizagem percetivo-motora, à segurança aquática e ao desenvolvimento da perícia no desporto, juntamente com os professores Ludovic Seifert e Chris Button.

Durante a manhã decorreram duas mesas-redondas:

(1) Skill transfer and water safety education, com Chris Button, Carolina Burnay e Rita Cordovil;

(2) 20 years of Ecological Dynamics – an overview and update, com Chris Button, Ludovic Seifert e Duarte Araújo

Na parte da tarde, o programa continuou com um conjunto de apresentações realizadas pelos doutorandos do SpertLab — Li Xiao, Margarida Vaz de Carvalho, Adriano Carvalho e Henrique Lopes — que partilharam os seus projetos de investigação nas áreas da perícia desportiva e da dinâmica ecológica.

Adriano Carvalho, Jorge Encantado, Henrique Brito, Henrique Lopes, Margarida Vaz de Carvalho, Catarina Belchior,and Duarte Araújo co-authored an article on the translation and adaptation of the “Self-Regulation of Sport Practice” questionnaire to portuguese, published in the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. Read here: https://doi.org/10.1080/1612197X.2025.2578849.

Self-regulation is considered essential to expert performance in sport, influencing both the quantity and quality of practice engagement. Until now, no instrument specifically designed to measure self-regulation during sport practice has existed for the Portuguese population. In this study, the Self-Regulation of Sport Practice Questionnaire (SRSP) was adapted and validated for Portuguese athletes. Using a sample of 253 participants from multiple sports, the results show that the Portuguese version (SRSPp) demonstrates good psychometric properties and reliability.

This work provides researchers and practitioners with a robust tool to evaluate athletes’ ability to plan, monitor, and reflect on their training — a key step toward understanding how self-regulation supports practice and performance development.