An Explicit Look at Implicit Learning: an Interrogative Review for Sport Coaching Research and Practice

Over the past 30 years, implicit coaching has emerged as a popular learning tool and pre-emptive intervention to avoid choking under pressure. Despite advocacy in the sport coaching literature, however, we are concerned that theoretical, methodological, and practical issues have potentially inflated or obscured its utility for coaching practice. In this paper, we lay out and elaborate on these concerns to stimulate critical dialogue that benefits sport coaches, performers, and their support teams and better situates the tool within the realities of real-world practice and delivery. Based on our review of extant evidence, we conclude that available implicit-learning methods are impractical and presently offer limited utility for sport coaching. Going forward, if scholars are to establish the relevance and impact of implicit methods, then research must directly address and respond to the challenges presented in this paper and adopt a more pragmatic perspective that better accounts for applied sporting contexts.