The integration and influence of sports science knowledge in coaching practices of high-performance coaches

Abstract: Over the past decades, the professionalization of sports has resulted in the in global demand for competitive advantage, otherwise termed the “winning edge”. The “winning edge” is highly sought after by both professional athletes and coaches. For coaches to meet performance demands, coaches must be able to keep abreast with global sporting trends to make informed decisions when it comes to their athletes. The primary purpose of this research study was to determine how high-performance coaches accessed the knowledge of sport scientists and what was their perception of sport science information. Secondly, to determine the barriers and limitations high performance coaches encountered in the accessing and implementation of sport science information. The study was based on the research model designed and developed by Simonin (2004) in his study on “an empirical investigation of the process of knowledge transfer in international strategic alliances”. A mixed methods approach was used to give the researcher the freedom of allowing participants to talk openly about the research questions in a focus group setting. The participants for the focus group comprised of 12 coaches, who had experience with both coaching and coach education. A total of 90 questionnaires were received of which two could not be used as they were not completed properly. The results in the study suggest that coaches learnt a great deal from sport scientists. Collaborative relationships appeared to be an influential factor on knowledge transfer. Team sport coaches worked more often with sport scientists and engaged with sport scientists through consultation and thus responded positively to knowledge transfer. The findings from this study suggest that coaches perceive sport science to be integrated into their practice, however further research is required to determine to what extent this integration occurs. It is however safe to assume that key determining factors were met mostly by team sport coaches in terms of learning intent, learning capacity and sport science accessibility, these findings can be attributed to the differences in the organisational culture between team and individual coaches.M.Phil. (Sport Science