Excellence and expert performance in sports: what do we know and where are we going?

Abstract

ABSTRACT This narrative review in this special issue marking the 20-year anniversary of the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology aims to summarise work on expertise research in sport psychology and beyond. We shall review findings based on factors affecting the path to excellence. The structure of factors is aligned to the multifactorial gene–environment interaction model of Ullén et al. [2016. Rethinking expertise: A multifactorial gene–environment interaction model of expert performance. Psychological Bulletin, 142(4), 427–446]. Our research synthesis indicates that individual factors for expertise are well discussed; but, too often, not examined well empirically in terms of their quantity and quality. Further, it is notable that most of the interactions between important factors have not been investigated together, and thus it is too early to draw specific conclusions on how the combined effects of factors influence expertise development and sport performance. A literature search that differentiates findings on factors for expertise in all sport-related research (using SPORTDiscus as a source) in comparison to papers published in the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology provides new ways of focusing future research in unexplored factors and their interactions. We shall provide an example of a recent large-scale project of about 600 national team level athletes in seven different sports to illustrate how general expertise models such as that from Ullén et al. can be applied to diagnostics in elite performance as one way to advance research in the field.