Evaluating the Brain-Targeted Teaching Model as a Framework for Athletic Skill Development

Athletic performance depends heavily on the brain, yet the principles that govern athletic skill acquisition across the motor learning, sport psychology, and cognitive neuroscience literatures are seldom presented to coaches in a single organizing framework. This article is not a systematic review of athletic skill acquisition. It is an evaluation of a single framework, the Brain-Targeted Teaching (BTT) model assessed here as a coach-facing scaffold for organizing that body of research. Sources were selected on the basis of their relevance to one or more BTT components rather than through an exhaustive search of the field, and the evaluation asks how well each component is supported by existing evidence in motor learning, sport psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. The six BTT components - emotional climate and psychological safety; the physical training environment; learning design and cognitive load; mastery through deliberate practice; the application and transfer of skills under pressure; and evaluation through feedback - offer an accessible organizational model. Across these areas, principles such as emotional regulation, deliberate practice, attentional focus, and formative feedback draw on overlapping neural systems across classroom and athletic contexts. The evaluation finds the mapping strongest for learning design, mastery, and evaluation, and weakest for the physical environment component, where the classroom construct and its athletic parallel diverge substantially. The BTT model gives coaches and athlete development practitioners a way to understand the processes underlying athletic skill development, though its value here is organizational rather than empirically validated.