Pillar 1 deals with research on talent development and elite sport with a focus on both individual development, team development, and development of development environments. The research focuses on factors and themes around athlete development, individually and collectively, from an individual and environmental perspective, as well as the influence of coaches and managers/leaders on development environments from both an environmental and a system perspective. Developing athletes to the elite level requires a lot in many different phases and steps in the athletes' development and even more if the athletes were to reach the elite level. Examples of research topics within this pillar are; coach development (system), talent development environment (environment), career and development transitions (environment), perfectionism (individual), stress (individual), dual career (individual/environment), the coach's role (individual/environment) and talent transfer (system).
 

Pillar 2 deals with research on performance environments in sports, schools and other contexts where individuals seek to develop skills and perform under pressure. The research is based on the fact that the quality of the environment is of crucial importance for both short-term performance and long-term development. The focus is on how social, structural and psychological factors influence motivation, learning and performance development. Central to the understanding of such environments are modern motivational theories that emphasize the interaction between environment and cognitive processes in the individual's learning and performance. Performance environments can be found in a wide range of contexts - from mandatory participation in physical education, via competition at various levels in voluntary sports, to professional refereeing and high-risk activities in extreme sports. Examples of research topics within this pillar are; school performance and assessment methods in physical education, decision-making and stress management among referees, motivation for risk-taking in climbing, as well as participation and dropout in children and youth sports. The goal is to understand how performance, learning and motivation are shaped and maintained in different performance environments.

In Pillar 3, the focus is on group dynamics and leadership, and the research is linked to developing knowledge about how the coach's leadership can facilitate optimal development in athletes and sports teams. We are particularly interested in investigating different leadership styles and leadership behaviors (identity leadership, transformational leadership, and destructive coaching behavior) and how they affect athletes and group dynamic factors such as cohesion, team trust, mastery beliefs, coping strategies, intrateam communication, and team coordination. In several of the research projects, we examine elite sports teams where we look at the interaction between coach, athlete, and group. Through educational, sociological, and social psychological theories, we seek to promote deeper insight into the psychological and social aspects of high-performing sports teams and the coaching processes.

To achieve success, an athlete depends on a well-functioning body and health. Athletes therefore invest thousands of hours in training, rest and nutrition to optimize their own bodies for development and success in competitions. In contrast to this optimization of the body, there is a widespread belief in sports that athletes should push their bodies to the limit and accept the risk of pain, injuries and burnout ("sacrifice everything"). Ignoring and trivializing pain, injuries and being mentally tired is therefore a central part of sports participation, also in the Scandinavian sports model. Sport is a context that normalizes and sometimes glorifies such risk, hence the term "risk culture". In this pillar, we aim to develop a better understanding and competence about sport as a risk culture, with a special focus on athlete well-being and healthy development environments. Examples of research topics within this pillar are; attitudes towards training and competing with pain and/or when mentally tired, attitudes towards communicating pain and/or that one is mentally tired to one's coaches (and teammates), attitudes towards the use of painkillers in connection with one's sports participation, experience of being injured, etc.