Perhaps you’ve never heard of K. Anders Ericsson.

Whether you have or not, he is one of the most important people in your gym every day. Ericsson is a professor who has done extensive research into the field of skill: How to build it, keep it and deepen it.

As this article points out, you can think of him as the “Expert on Experts.” Anything you want to get better at — from dribbling a basketball to actually coaching a team — comes into Ericsson’s field of study.

To quote Ericsson, “Successful people spontaneously do things differently from those individuals who stagnate. They have different practice histories. Elite performers engage in what we call ‘deliberate practice’–an effortful activity designed to improve individual target performance. There has to be some way they’re innovating in the way they do things.”

Here is an article done by Ericsson in conjunction with two colleagues. Though the work is very academic, it bears reading because few things will ever be more important in your coaching life than what separates elite performers from the rest.