20 years later: deliberate practice and the development of expertise in sport

Abstract

Twenty-one years ago, Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Romer published their seminal work expounding the notion of deliberate practice in explaining the development of expertise. This concept has since become extremely influential in the fields of sport psychology and motor learning. This review evaluates current understanding of deliberate practice in sport skill acquisition with an emphasis on the role of deliberate practice in distinguishing expert athletes from non-experts. In particular, we re-examine the original tenets of Ericsson et al.'s framework to (a) evaluate the sport-related research supporting their claims and (b) identify remaining research questions in this area. The review highlights the overall importance of deliberate practice in the development of expert sport performers; however, our understanding is far from complete. Several directions for future research are highlighted, including the need for more rigorous research designs and statistical models that can evaluate changes in developmental and contextual factors across development. Finally, we advocate for a more thorough understanding of the implications of a ‘deliberate practice approach’ for coaching science.

Keywords:

• expertise
• skill-acquisition
• practice

Notes

1. There is some confusion regarding what the ‘monotonic benefits assumption’ means. By definition, a monotonic function is an ordered system of sets, whereby each subsequent set contains the preceding set. This could be interpreted as meaning that gains at each subsequent career stage in a developing athlete's pathway are supported by accrued benefits at prior stages. However, the actual career-span pattern of sport performance as a function of practice has not been plotted in sport expertise research on young, developing athletes. Several studies on developing young athletes have, however, consistently shown that increases in deliberate practice are monotonic (i.e. constant increases at each subsequent career stage in sequence) for expert/elite samples.