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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sports Coaching: Performance and Development
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1532810
This article is part of the Research Topic Environmental Determinants of Athletes’ Development and Performance View all 3 articles
Combining environment and task manipulation improves the development of individual creativity in futsal players
Provisionally accepted
Behzad Mohammadi Orangi 1*
Behrouz Ghorbanzadeh 2
Mansour Shahraki 3*
Mozhgan Memarmoghadam 4
Matthieu EM Lenoir 5- 1 Damghan University, Dāmghān, Semnan, Iran
- 2 Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran
- 3 Zabol University, Zabol, Sistan and Baluchestan, Iran
- 4 University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Mazandaran, Iran
- 5 Ghent University, Ghent, East Flanders, Belgium
Literature on the effect of task and environment manipulation with the purpose of stimulating creative actions in futsal is promising yet limited. The aim of this study was to compare the effect of task and environmental manipulation on individual creativity development of futsal players. To conduct this study, 40 male players of the university futsal teams (Mage=23.99, SD=2.21) were randomly divided into 4 training groups: 1. playing on the futsal field (G1 -control), 2. Playing on the half-field futsal (G2task manipulation), 3. Playing on the soccer field, simulated with futsal (G3 -environment manipulation), and 4. Playing on half of the simulated field (G4 -combined).The groups played futsal in 15 sessions according to the specific conditions of each group (5x5).Before and after the intervention, individual creativity was assessed by means of video analysis.Players in G4 exhibited more progress at the level of total number of actions, and number of adequate, creative (G4: 1300% increase > G2: 450% > G3: 300% > G1: 300%), and original (G4: 450% increase > G2: 171% > G1: 225% > G3: 71%) actions after the intervention. However, participants in G2 improved more with respect to the degree of variability in behavior (G2: 58% increase > G4: 53% > G1: 44% > G3: 21%). These results emphasize the importance of manipulation of constraints (changing the size) as a potential gateway to stimulate creativity in futsal players. Moreover, this study highlights the significant role of combined manipulation (G4), which outperformed other groups in most creativity-related metrics, contributing valuable insights into futsal training methodologies.
Keywords: variability, constraints, Education, coaching, Degrees of freedom
Received: 22 Nov 2024; Accepted: 18 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mohammadi Orangi, Ghorbanzadeh, Shahraki, Memarmoghadam and Lenoir. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Behzad Mohammadi Orangi, Damghan University, Dāmghān, Semnan, Iran
Mansour Shahraki, Zabol University, Zabol, 56131-56491, Sistan and Baluchestan, Iran
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