In the last few decades, an increasing number of talent identification and development (TID) programs in sports have been installed by professional sports clubs, commercial agencies and national governing institutions. All have the goal of identifying talented young athletes as early as possible in the hope of laying the foundations for superior senior performance and success in the long term. Undoubtedly, ‘talent’ as well as high level performance in most sports requires a range of perceptual, cognitive, psychological, tactical and technical skills. In particular, technical skills seem to be essential given the highly demanding and specialized proficiencies required for high quality performance in various sports even during early phases of development.

This project investigates the role of sport-specific technical skills in the context of talent science in various sports. The focus is to further understand technical skills’ crucial role within TID activities and to fathom the potential of so far sparingly applied biomechanical assessment methods. Here, innovative and new methods (e.g. Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) or markerless motion analysis) will be applied and tested. In the end, the gained knowledge and findings will be of use for the scientific talent field as well as the applied sports.

Contact: Till Koopmann