The concept of
deliberate practice has been bantered about quite a bit lately mainly due to
Malcolm Galdwell’s book The Outliers. Along with that, Anders
Ericsson’s concept of ten years and ten thousand hours to achieve expert status
is getting a lot of attention. I think that Ericsson with his concept of ten
years and ten thousand hours to achieve expert status is spot on in the arts
and in cognitive intellectual fields. I am not sure that it has as much
application to sport. There is no doubt that deliberate practice is essential to
achieve excellence in any field. I think what is not being discussed is what exactly
does deliberate practice consist of? Is it just doing the sport movements or is
it formal structured practice? In my opinion it must be mindful practice with a
purpose that is personal to the individual. I think at the younger ages most
probably before puberty it should be unstructured play, where the youngster gets
a feel for gross motor skills and then begins to refine those into finer motor
skills well before there is any thought of being sport specific. It is always
interesting to watch kids imitate mature performers. They can copy stars movements
to a tee. When I was working with the MLS Tampa Bay Mutiny I remember watch
ing
the sons of the players, all age seven to nine, playing a little pick–up soccer
game during our practice. They were all trying to imitate what their dads were
doing. This is where it starts, but then I think we have misinterpreted Ericsson’s
work and introduced structured practice too early. We need to allow each
youngster to achieve general physical literacy, to learn how to move and play.
There is plenty of time for
deliberate practice. Concerning deliberate practice,
it must be that, it must be planned, it must be individual, it must stress
quality, but it must not be robotic, the individual should be able to find his
or her own style. If you want to read a good book on this area I would
recommend Talent Is Overrated – What Really Separates World-Class performers from
Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin.
4 Comments
Timothy Clark
Thanks for bringing this up Vern. It seems that the cultural short cuts some are taking with Ericcson’s work miss it’s real value. His focus was on the role of intentional or deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance not that deliberate practice was the only factor. His published work defines deliberate practice well and has been very helpful for me as a coach in understanding that element of development. But, Ericcson also cites Bloom’s work and acknowledges the importance of play as well as the role of work or performance. In fact he points out how performance or contest is limited in it’s value for developing a skill. The example he uses is a batter in a baseball game seeing maybe 5-15 pitches during a three hour game as compared to the learning that can take place when that hitter is working with a dedicated pitcher through several hundred batting opportunities systematically exploring strengths and weaknesses. If we paid more attention to that maybe we wouldn’t be running kids through more games than practices and tournament weekends that see them playing 4 or 5 games in three days. Ericcson also points out the necessity for recovery between bouts of deliberate practice. Okay, I’ll get off the soap box now. I liked Gladwell’s book and it makes an interesting jumping off point. it would also serve us to actually read Ericcson’s work. If people are looking for a good companion piece check out Jason Gulbin’s paper on Why Deliberate Practice Isn’t Enough. Gulbin is with the National Talent Search Program with the Australian Institute of Sport.
Tim Clark
Peter Fernley
Hi Vern
Have you read “Expert Performance in Sports” (2003) by Janet L. Starkes and K.A. Ericsson. (Published by Human Kinetics) Let me share one quote from the book with you. “The best approach to developing sport expertise is to expose children to a large variety of motor skills and experiences early on (6 to 14 years) so that children will not miss windows of opportunity and leave specialization for later on (15 years and older) . (Starkes and Ericsson 2003, p 113) In the book, amongst other things the role of spontaneous & deliberate play is discussed, as is what constitutes deliberate practice for athletes.
Chris
Ken Dryden, in his book, The Game, wrote, “Without talent, hard work does not work.”
Duane Banks
I’m not an expert in athletic development, or even a hot-shot coach, but I agree wholeheartedly with your statement, “We need to allow each youngster to achieve general physical literacy, to learn how to move and play.” I like the phrase “deliberate practice”. But deliberate practice should include unstructured play at EVERY level.