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How Athletes Get Great

outsideonline.com

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Re: How Athletes Get Great

#11

Post by agumonkey »

mathattack wrote: post #2

Interesting article. I think when it comes to pure physical sports they're missing some of the original point. The concept of 10,000 hours is about developing a skill, not becoming physically gifted. Michael Jordan's 10,000 hours come from shooting and knowing where to go where the ball will be, more so than just being the most physically gifted.

In my own experience, the physical interface is a third of the skill. So I agree, the abstraction, perspective is far more important. Physical capacity to serve the need of an idea.

Re: How Athletes Get Great

#12

Post by agumonkey »

Retric wrote: post #3
mathattack wrote: post #2

Interesting article. I think when it comes to pure physical sports they're missing some of the original point. The concept of 10,000 hours is about developing a skill, not becoming physically gifted. Michael Jordan's 10,000 hours come from shooting and knowing where to go where the ball will be, more so than just being the most physically gifted.

Your ignoring the chess example where 3,000 hours get some people to masters status but 25,000 is not enough for others. 10,000 was an average but a useless one because it's for 20 year olds and there is only so much free time before 20 and many need far less time which means others needed even more.

You can run in circles for long sometimes. I suppose the people who get stuck needs another teacher, context. Or just a time off. Sometimes you finally click for something you didn't understand 10 years earlier, for almost no reasons, but now your brain sees it. As weird as pleasurable.

Re: How Athletes Get Great

#13

Post by jackschultz »

I played high level golf for a while and a lot of these articles forget the two main rules I've learned from it. The first is intense practice. This means devoting 100 percent to every repetition. This is obviously difficult because of, among other things, repetition is inherently boring. Luckily for golf, there are an infinite number of shots to practice, and working on all of them should break up the monotony. This leads into the second rule for practice, which is to vary what you work on. For golf, this means playing different shots from all different locations. Besides making it more interesting, it makes you go through the actual process that you would encounter on the course.

This generalizes to other activities easily. The best practice I've found comes from complete effort in game/competition like environments.

Re: How Athletes Get Great

#14

Post by jacques_chester »

jackschultz wrote: post #13

I played high level golf for a while and a lot of these articles forget the two main rules I've learned from it. The first is intense practice. This means devoting 100 percent to every repetition. This is obviously difficult because of, among other things, repetition is inherently boring. Luckily for golf, there are an infinite number of shots to practice, and working on all of them should break up the monotony. This…

In fairness to Ericsson and Gladwell, they didn't say "any old 10,000 hours will do". The basic hypothesis was, as you say, that it had to focused and deliberate.

Re: How Athletes Get Great

#15

Post by dvt »

I don't think that Epstein is being very charitable with Gladwell's 10,000 figure. Gladwell:

a) Doesn't make the 10,000-hour figure a rule as both Epstein and Repanich would have us believe.

b) Fully concedes that there are myriads of other factors that have an effect on how one reaches "expert status".

I'm also not sure how Epstein can claim that the chess master study is somehow disanalogous with the athlete one. An expert athlete might have some physical advantage over your "average Joe": speed, lean muscle, endurance, height, etc., etc. Similarly, one can say that an expert chess player may have some neurophysiological advantage over the "average Joe": better-formed synaptic pathways, higher attention span, etc., etc. I don't think there's any difference between an expert chess master or an NFL quarterback.

Both might have some genetic advantage; both have trained extensively. The idea behind Gladwell's figure is not that you can practice X for 10,000 hours and then you will instantly be an expert at it, but merely that after 10,000 hours (of deliberate practice plus a number of contingencies) you can expect to be somewhere in the realm of expertness.

There are plenty of other studies that favor this hypothesis; in particular, some very interesting double-blind identical twin studies[1].

Outside of extreme cases (e.g. I am 4'11'' and want to play in the NBA; I have an IQ of 90 and want to be an astronaut), I think Gladwell is right on the money: practice is more important than talent.

[1] http://www.indiana.edu/~jkkteach/P335/shanks_expertise.html

Re: How Athletes Get Great

#16

Post by clarky07 »

Interesting notes / anecdotes from me about 10,000 hours and genetics.

I played golf at a pretty high level throughout high school and college. I practiced and played golf on most days for 8 straight years. I'm sure I reached 10k hours. Currently, I don't have almost any time to practice and play golf. I haven't practiced or played regularly in at least 6 years. Yet, playing once every 2 months or so I'm still able to shoot at or near par most of the time. I suspect this has more to do with the 10k hours of practice than my natural abilities. Not really any way to prove that, but I suspect a similarly athletic person who hasn't put in that practice wouldn't generally shoot par playing 6 times a year.

Re: How Athletes Get Great

#18

Post by jacques_chester »

dvt wrote: post #15

I don't think that Epstein is being very charitable with Gladwell's 10,000 figure. Gladwell: a) Doesn't make the 10,000-hour figure a rule as both Epstein and Repanich would have us believe. b) Fully concedes that there are myriads of other factors that have an effect on how one reaches "expert status". I'm also not sure how Epstein can claim that the chess master study is somehow disanalogous with the athlete one. A…

The problem is that the chess study shows that some people never became chess masters, no matter how many hours they practiced.

There was a hard upper limit to their performance that no amount of training could surmount. Insofar as "expert" is defined by relative ranking, some people will never become experts. Why? Because they are outranked by the "naturals".

The general problem with the Gladwell/Ericsson hypothesis is that it sorta-kinda suggests that practice is both necessary and sufficient to produce expert-level performance.

Everyone agrees on necessity. It is the question of sufficiency that is demonstrably false. People are different and are better suited to different endeavours; no amount or sort of training or practice can change the boundaries of your phenotypic potential.

You can move a long way from an average baseline in the direction of expertise -- humans are very malleable. But there are hard limits. Elite performers in any field are elite because they were better suited and then did the practice.

Re: How Athletes Get Great

#20

Post by jliechti1 »

jacques_chester wrote: post #18
dvt wrote: post #15

I don't think that Epstein is being very charitable with Gladwell's 10,000 figure. Gladwell: a) Doesn't make the 10,000-hour figure a rule as both Epstein and Repanich would have us believe. b) Fully concedes that there are myriads of other factors that have an effect on how one reaches "expert status". I'm also not sure how Epstein can claim that the chess master study is somehow disanalogous with the athlete one. A…

The problem is that the chess study shows that some people never became chess masters, no matter how many hours they practiced. There was a hard upper limit to their performance that no amount of training could surmount. Insofar as "expert" is defined by relative ranking, some people will never become experts. Why? Because they are outranked by the "naturals". The general problem with the Gladwell/Ericsson hypothesis…

I think you are missing part of the results of Ericsson's research. He makes a very specific point to distinguish practice from deliberate practice. 10000 hours of practice is very different from 10000 hours of deliberate practice.

My interpretation of Ericsson's work is that natural talent can give certain individuals a head start in the beginning, but once you get into the domain of expertise, this head start at the beginning is very tiny and the effects of practice completely overpower it in comparison. However, I think in areas like sports - genetics do play more of a role. If you are less than 5 feet tall, you probably will not be an NBA point guard, even after 10000 hours of deliberate practice.

One of his papers for further reading:

From The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance

"Consider three general types of activities, namely, work, play,and deliberate practice. Work includes public performance, competitions, services rendered for pay, and other activities directly motivated by external rewards. Play includes activities that have no explicit goal and that are inherently enjoyable. Deliberate practice includes activities that have been specially designed to improve the current level of performance."

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/D...

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