Change of plans: an evaluation of the effectiveness and underlying mechanisms of successful talent transfer.

Talent transfer (TT) is a recently formalised process used to identify and develop talented athletes by selecting individuals who have already succeeded in one sport and transferring them to another. Despite the increasing popularity of TT amongst national organisations and sport governing body professionals, however, there is little empirical evidence as to its efficacy or how it may be most efficiently employed. Accordingly, this investigation was designed to gain a deeper understanding of the effectiveness and underlying mechanisms of TT, achieved through a two-part study. Stage 1 provided a quantitative analysis of the incidence and distribution or, in this respect, epidemiology of TT, finding the most popular transfer to be sprinting to bobsleigh, with an average transfer age of 19 years. Stage 2 scrutinised the TT process and explored the specific cases revealed in stage 1 by examining the perceptions of four sport science support specialists who had worked in TT settings, finding several emergent themes which, they felt, could explain the TT processes. The most prominent theme was the psychosocial mechanism of TT, an aspect currently missing from TT initiatives, suggesting that current TT systems are poorly structured and should redress their approach to develop a more integrated scheme that encompasses all potential mechanisms of transfer.

Blank canvas or under construction? Examining the pre-academy experiences of young developing professional team sports athletes.

Introduction: Extensive research has been carried out on Talent Development (TD) environments and an increasing amount of work shows the development of psychological characteristics as an important formal part of the academy experience. Importantly, however, very little attention has been paid to what types of skills, if any, young players arrive with. In other words, there seems to be an assumption that young athletes arrive at the academy as a blank canvas. Methods: As such, to investigate whether players' arrive with these psychological characteristics, we looked across a sample of young footballers' and rugby players' personal experiences (such as, family input, sporting background or personal challenges) prior joining the academy. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted, and data were analysed via thematic analysis. Results: Our findings suggested that young athletes acquired an aptitude from general experiences, whereby they had already started to develop and deploy specific skills (such as, reflective practice, mental skills or seeking social support) to navigate particular challenges, prior to arriving at the academy. Conclusion: Implications include the need for coaches and psychologists to assess young athletes' skillsets and pre-academy experiences upon arrival and use this as a starting point for developing tailored and individualised pathways that would enable them maximise their potential.

Contemporary pedagogy? The use of theory in practice: An evidence-informed perspective.

Utilizing cognitive psychology as a foundation, this paper offers a deeper consideration of contemporary theoretical influences on coaching pedagogy. Countering recent dichotomies suggested between pedagogic approaches, we reintroduce key findings from the cognitive tradition and their implications for practice which coaches may find useful. Using cognitive load, novice and expert differences, desirable difficulty, and fidelity, we suggest that the lines drawn between different "pedagogies" may not be as sharp as suggested. Instead, we suggest that coaches avoid defining themselves as being aligned to a specific pedagogical or paradigmatic stance. We conclude by advocating for research informed practice, absent of strict theoretical boundaries and instead, considering contemporary pedagogy as drawing on the needs of the context, the experience of the coach and the best available evidence.

Show Me, Tell Me: An Investigation Into Learning Processes Within Skateboarding as an Informal Coaching Environment.

Coach education is a learner-centred process, which often fails to consider the preferences of the consumer. Historically, research into performers' experiences of coaching have been influenced by the social constructivism of learning: in short, an expressed preference for what the performer has experienced as determined by their coach, rather than their own personal preferences. Therefore, this research used skateboarding as a natural laboratory in order to explore the current practices and preferences of performers in a coach-free environment. Ninety-one skateboarders from parks in the United Kingdom and New Zealand offered information relating to their current learning practices, how they learnt about learning, and how the top-level performers in their environment were differentiated. Findings suggest that a number of learning tools are used by performers, which are closely aligned with a more traditional, cognitive view of coaching (e.g., demonstration, drills, and error usage). Results also suggest that performers deployed a number of cognitive skills (e.g., imagery, analogy, and understanding) to enhance storage of a movement as an internal representation. Finally, in the absence of formal coaching, performers use their knowledge of learning to appoint informal leaders. Implications for practice are discussed.