What is Think Aloud?
Simply put, Think Aloud is the talking through of your thought processes as they occur in action. It originated from cognitive psychology, where researchers used the method to understand how people think during problem-solving activities. Since this early research, sports practitioners and researchers have been using Think Aloud to understand their participants and themselves.
From a participant perspective, coaches can mic up their participants, ask them to Think Aloud and both the participant and coach can listen back to this audio to understand a variety of different things about how the performer thinks, copes and processes information during performance.
From a coaching perspective, the coach can mic themselves up, record both their coaching audio and their thoughts as they occur (where possible) and listen back to this to gain an insight into their own cognitions and behaviors during coaching performance.