Expert Performance in Sports Advances in Research on Sport

Studying how athletes reach and stay at the pinnacle of their sport is the domain of sport expertise researchers. This book provides an overview of the most critical issues facing those pursuing research in elite sport. It identifies the questions typically asked when studying sport expertise and provides theoretical and practical applications for the development of sport expertise in athletes, referees and judges. The text also addresses such questions as how to potentially speed up the acquisition process; how easy or difficult it is for experts to retain high performance levels as they age; how coaches structure practices to maximise active time and preparation for the next competition. It also examines the role of coaches and mentors when working with elite performers; what aspects of performance (anticipation, perceptual accuracy, decision speed, response selection, response consistency, strategy etc) best reflect expert behaviours in a particular sport.