Abstract: The current study mainly involves the development history, the status quo and the future directions of "performance analysis" (PA). PA stems from the notational analysis. With the change from method to methodology for more than a century of practice and research, it has gradually been considered as a newly emerging subdiscipline of sports science in the 21st century. The qualitative method, the quantitative method and a combination of the two methods are used in PA to directly describe and analyze "human movement", mainly including notational analysis method and motion analysis method. Generally, to better understand its definition, we need to analyze it from methodological and disciplinary aspects. Evaluation of technical and tactical performance, analysis of reliability and validity, load monitoring and interdisciplinary research are the research hotspots of PA. The emergence of related majors and the new occupation, such as performance analyst, has strongly driven the scientific development of sports training. So far it still faces some challenges in the aspects of theoretical basis, analytical techniques, talent cultivation and discipline influence, but PA's theoretical system will be improved, developing towards the direction of intelligence of analytical measures, the popularization of service objects and the professionalization of talent cultivation.