Developing Sport Expertise

Damian Farrow holds a joint appointment with Victoria University, Australia, and the Australian Institute of Sport as a Professor of Sports Science. His extensive research activity is designed to support Australian coaches seeking to understand factors critical to developing sport expertise, particularly perceptual-cognitive skill and practice methodology. Joseph Baker is with the Lifespan Health and Performance Laboratory at York University, Canada. Joe is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and four previous books. His research considers the influences on optimal human development, ranging from issues affecting youth development to barriers and facilitators of successful aging. Clare MacMahon is discipline leader of Sport Science and head of Motor Learning and Skilled Performance in Health Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses on cognitive aspects of movement skills, including learning and retaining complex perceptual-cognitive skills such as sport decision making.

1 Introduction: Developing Expertise in Sport Section 1 Expert Systems 2 Outliers, Talent Codes and Myths: Play and Practice in Developing the Expert Athlete 3 How Good Are We At Predicting Athletes’ Futures? 4 Functional Sport Expertise Systems Section 2 Expert Officials and Coaches 5 The Sports Official in Research and Practice 6 Developing the Expert Performance Coach Section 3 Contemporary Coaching Approaches 7 Observation as an Instructional Method 8 Organizing Practice: Effective Practice Is More than Just Reps 9 Practising Implicit (Motor) Learning Section 4 Expert Athlete Processes 10 'Choking' In Sport: Research and Implications 11 Expert Visual Perception: Why Having a Quiet Eye Matters in Sport 12 The Recipe for Expert Decision Making 13 Developing Tactics: Advances in Cognitive Psychology and Technology Section 5 Expert Commentary 14 Research –Informed Practice…Are We Nearly There Yet? 15 There Is No Easy Route to Expertise