It has been over 10 years now since Malcolm Gladwell wrote his national best seller Outliers where he shared Anders Erickson research on a group of concert violinists that practiced  10,000 hours to perfect their craft.

Since that point Malcolm has been challenged by researchers, coaches, and experts in the space including David Epstein who debunked the 10,000 rule in his book The Sports Gene.

 

Not that I would EVER put myself in the same space as authors of best sellers, but from the time I read Outliers years back I too questioned Malcolm’s argument as have coached for many years and have never believed in the cliché that practice makes perfect nor in the benefits of starting to practice at such an early age and work one sport that is driving early sports specialization.

In lieu … Practice Makes Permanent

If you practice 10,000 hours wrong … you have a real serious bad habit.

Every kid I have coached at the beginning of the season I would tell them .. I would rather you do it slow and RIGHT than fast and WRONG.  Too many kids want to rush thru drills so they can get to the end of the practice that coaches will have “fun time” but the entire practice should be fun and if you disguise your drills and they are fun, kids won’t rush thru, cheat the drill and do them right so they do develop correctly in lieu of building bad habits that can’t be reversed later.

Here are the reasons why I have argued that the 10,000 hour rule is a fallacy to reach the highest levels of athletics, earn an NCAA Sports Scholarship or playing professionally (where less that 1% will reach those levels)

 

 

#1 –  Practice Must be Deliberate AND Unstructured

 

As Malcolm is more of a historian, than a researcher whose very livelihood revolves around publishing journal articles and books with their scientific data and longitudinal studies, one who was the first to challenge him was the very person whom he did not consult with when he was writing his best seller Outliers, Anders Erickson.

Anders did share in a research study many years back when he looked at concert violinist and the amount of practice that they had to do in order to reach that level on average it took over 10,000 hours of working on their craft.

It was not just the fact that they sat down and practiced daily to accumulate those hours, it was due to how deliberate the practice was, which included working with some of the top music teachers who provided practice plans, feedback and error correction.

As David did with the Sports Gene, he released his counter to Malcolm’s Outliers with his book Peak where he shares insight on the research done on deliberate practice.

What further research has shown is practice must have purpose but the best way to audment the skills is to allow for unstructured free play, where athletest can develop anticipatory skills and adapt.  The best analogy is Wayne Gretzky who many argue was the greatest player ever not because of his skill set but he anticipated where the puck was going to be.  This is why I have an issue with the term “read and react”, meaning read the play, react to the play BUT due to the speed of hockey and many other sports today you don’t have time to react.  In lieu, I have always told my players to read and ACT.  Yes, that means at times they may be caught offside, may make mistakes, but in order to play at the highest level, you must be able to make decisions on the fly.  This is why every practice must include unstructure free play time where coaches don’t coach, just allow the players to PLAY and develop creativity, reading the game and making decisions without criticism.

#2 – Practice must have key teaching and execution points

Having evaluated many team sports coaches over the years, one of the key shortfalls of their practices is they run drill after drill but the majority of grass roots coaches working with kids in their key development years of motor skill acquisition do not focus on key teaching points for every one of those drills.

This can also go hand in hand with the error correction that must be relayed to players when they are running thru the drill by the coach that is assigned to do so.  As more and more sports are implementing their versions of LTAD, many practices including skills stations where players move from one station to the other and more often than not a coach will merely setup the drill for the players to run thru but not share what they are looking for in terms of the skill mechanics nor correct errors.

This is due largely in part to the head coach not communicating with the assistant coaches what the key teaching points are and the importance of stopping the drill to correct errors when they happen.

The feedback must be relayed soon after the skill was done, both positive praise for real effort (great job) and if error correction needed (johnny, in order to accelerate thru the turn you must lead with your inside skate, outside edge so can cross over with your outside skate with speed).

As many coaches neglect to do in practices, they try to correct mistakes in games (both strategic and skills) but games should be the time for the kids to PLAY to develop confidence and try the skills they worked on in games in a safe to fail environment.

#3 – Praise Effort to reinforce the Growth Mindset

As the entire sports world has learned thru the work of Carol Dweck, feedback relayed to athletes in those drills must focus on the growth mindset and encourage kids to try harder variations of the drill even it if means they will make mistakes.

 

 

Yes … mistakes … the uglier the better which Karch Kiraly made infamous on his whiteboard for the US National Women’s Volleyball team that he guided to their first EVER international championship and a bronze medal in the 2016 Summer Olympics after reading and implementing the growth mindset with the team.

 

 

The only way that kids will develop their skills and creativity is if their practice environment mirrors more what it was like for Gen X whose sports development relayed more on unstructured free play and the opportunity to take risks and learn from them with no adults telling them what to do, how to do it, and criticizing their mistakes.

This criticism is also coming from parents either at home or the ride to/from the facility and even their team mates if coaches do not have a code of conduct to respect their teammates or the late great John Wooden 3rd rule “Never criticize your teammates”

#4 – The Research

One of the top 10 MUST Read books that we recommend to everyone is David Epstein’s book “The Sports Gene” that debunked the 10,000 hour rule and also highlights the benefits of multi-sport participation vs. the pitfalls of early sports specialization with data.  Another that I know will be a top recommendation will be his upcoming book Range highlighting how generalization, not specialization, is the optimal pathway to become the best athlete a person can be.

 

In 2014 a study was done at Princeton University by Brooke Macnamara that looked at the amount of deliberate practice accumulated over time only had a limited impact in high performance or skill acquisition across various domains including music, games, sports, professions, and education.

The highest impact was found on strategic games like Scrabble and Chess, where chances of becoming a grandmaster have a direct correlation on the amount of practice one gets before a certain age and study showed 18% was attributed to deliberate practice.

The second was Music – Violin, and piano @ 21%

The third was Sports – where deliberate practice accounted for 18% of what was required to reach the highest level.

Why?

Because you can practice perfectly until you are blue in face for YEARS but in addition to practice … DNA plays a role … I have seen it firsthand as a parent, both my kids (who have now aged out of youth sports) inherited my wife’s gene for size (she is 5’1  and I am 6’2”) and although both appeared to inherit my multi-sport athletic gene, were unable to advance to higher levels (junior, collegiate) as were told over and over again they were too small.

Kids also need to have the right eating, sleeping habits to provide the nutrition balance for carbs vs. proteins and associated vitamins, rest and recovery to avoid injuries.  Many kids today are also addicted to screens, as I shared in a prior post, Why Kids Play Video Games, eSports has evolved to a Billion Dollar industry thanks to games becoming more and more addictive in their nature.

As a result of specialization accelerating travel ball and chasing AAA teams that travel across the country or to other countries where kids play multiple “prospect” tournaments annually they also need parents that either (a) have the financial resources to support the costs or (b) are going deeper and deeper into debt trying to keep up with the jones to do so.

Kids also need to have GREAT coaches, parents, teachers to help them get the great grades (if aspire for NCAA must also do well in school to be a student-athlete) as well as support from others in their network (neighbors, friends other family members)

It takes a village to raise a child.

 #5 – Because Malcolm Gladwell acknowledged the very rule he is infamous for was false.

It takes courage to own up to when one made a mistake and I applaud Malcolm (fellow Canadian) for doing so, at the time he wrote the book he based his analysis on what was available at the time, but since that point there has been so much evidence brought forth, not just yours truly opinion well before Outliers became a National Best Seller.

In an interview he recently had with David Epstein for MIT’s Sports Analytics conference, he shares how he and David became friends due to the fact David challenged the rule 5 years ago with his research and expertise in terms of the optimal pathway to reach the top level in sport was developing physical literacy by sampling as many sports and physical activities as possible.

Below is the entire interview he did with David, go to 54 minute mark to hear when he admits the 10,000 hour rule was false when it comes to early specialization.

If you have gotten this point in the blog hopefully, like Malcolm, your opinion has swayed and if you truly aspire for your players, son or daughter to become the best they can be, in lieu of having them work a sport by specializing as early as 7 years old, support them to sample as many sports and other activities (drama, art, science, theatre, music, languages) as possible and have a normal childhood so they can find what they truly will be passionate in doing later in life.

Ask yourself – what is your calling?

Do you know? If so when did you figure it out? Your 20’s – 30’s – 40’s later or still figuring it out?

How then as an adult can we be vulnerable to other adults who are “recommending” to us as coaches or parents for our son or daughter to have them specialize at an early age which will potentially deprive them of finding their true calling later in life.

Too many kids are quitting youth sports before high school or were deselected that potentially could have been late bloomers or played other sports early on only to find the one they became passionate about later on and the list is endless of athletes I could share that did reach NCAA or professional level as they did not burn out, developed all core motor skills or suffered potential career-ending injuries way too early.

Our calling as youth sports coaches is not to make a living (especially as majority are volunteers), or huge profits those that are advocating early sport specialization, but to make a difference by developing youth into adults.

Let’s all work together to bring the game back to the kids …. where it belongs