Invited Paper: Specificity and Practicability of Sports Coaching Articles Published in Sports Coaching Science

Abstract

Sports coaching science has the character of multidisciplinary and with a true value of practicability. This article aimed to review and analyze the specificity and practicability for articles being published in Sports Coaching Science by Sports & Exercise Research 2006-2014. The results indicated that a total of 449 articles were published and there appeared lack of proportion and imbalance among ten academic fields. 38 out of 449 articles were adopted and published in Sports Coaching Science and were distributed in 9 categories, the number and percentage in each category were as follows: 9 (23.68%) in analysis of competition skill performance; 9 (23.68%) in effect of training methods; 4 (10.53%) in competition strategy; 4 (10.53%) in technology innovation; 3 (7.89%) in sport/event specific characteristics; 3 (7.89%) in other topics; 2 (5.26%) in elite athletes case study; 2 (5.26%) in training monitoring and, 2 (5.26%) in comparative analysis on competitions, respectively. When further exam the specificity and practicability of the articles revealed that there is a need to be improved including: subjects used in the studies were mostly collegiate students and the result can hardly being applied to the top athletes; the experimental period of the studies ranged from 6-8 weeks which were relatively short to be considered as a sound scientific research; the literature reviewed need to include the most recent studies and the topics need to be up to date with international trends; most studies were conducted in a single rather than multidisciplinary approaches; the research topics need to match up with national sports policies; studies on training methods and techniques need to be more innovative and focus on key methods and/or techniques to win. It was concluded that the quality and quantity of the articles that may be improved by increasing the number in each issue and thus ensured a balanced proportion among academic fields.