Abstract

The development of expertise is a topic of great interest in the area of sports. The theory of deliberate practice was proposed by Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Roemer (1993) to explain how some performers reach the elite levels by engaging in more effective training (deliberate practice). Subsequent work has extended these ideas to the sport domain. Starkes and her colleagues identified training activities that elite athletes engage in more than less accomplished athletes, both in individual and team sports. In their original work with experts musicians, Ericsson et al. (1993) had experts rate enjoyment, relevance for improvement, and effort of different types of music-related activities. Ericsson et al. (1993) found that the most accomplished musicians spent much more time on highly relevant activities such as "practice alone" compared to less accomplished expert musicians. Most interestingly, none of the musicians rated "practice alone" as the most enjoyable activity - in fact, all musicians preferred to play music for fun, take lessons with their teachers and listen to music. Given that "practice alone" was only rated as reasonably enjoyable, Ericsson (1996) proposed that adult expert musicians engaged in deliberate practice for its value for improvement of their performance, thus forsaking more immediate enjoyment offered by play. In their analysis of the initial involvement of children in sport, Cote and Hay proposed that playing with the intention of having fun (deliberate play) was more relevant than the mature notion of deliberate practice. The present study will thus assess the involvement in deliberate play and deliberate practice during the development of internaitonal level performance in gymnastics. The authors also examine the evidence for the three stages of development in sport proposed by Cote & Hay: the sampling years, the specializing years and the investment years. Aus der Einfuehrung